Brian Foster and the Enormous Oak Tree That Taught Him How High “Enough” Could Be
Brian Foster still measures certain kinds of courage against an oak tree from 1990—the kind with rough bark that left your palms warm and stinging, and sturdy branches that didn’t just hold your weight, they held your nerve. Back then, it didn’t matter what the grown-ups thought was tall. What mattered was how big that tree felt from the ground, and how quiet everything got once you were a few branches up.
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Visit Oh Sherri Irish Pub →That tree felt enormous when I was a kid. Each branch was like a step higher into something unknown. Reaching the top wasn’t just about the climb—it was about proving you could get there.
The Oak Tree That Made the World Feel Bigger
There’s a specific kind of “enormous” you only get as a kid—the kind that doesn’t come from measurements, but from the way your body understands risk. For Brian Foster, that oak wasn’t scenery. It was a dare that stood perfectly still. The rough bark wasn’t just texture; it was evidence that this thing had been here long before his small hands decided to take it on.
In 1990, before everything had a screen and a record and a way to be watched, the tree offered a private test. Brian Foster didn’t need applause at the bottom. He needed that moment where a foot finds purchase, where a branch turns from “maybe” into “mine,” and where the next reach asks the same question every time: are you really going to do it?
Each Branch, a New Kind of Silence
What Brian Foster describes—each branch feeling like a step into something unknown—carries the truth of how climbing works when you’re young. The ground falls away in little increments. The air changes. The sounds shift. Even confidence changes shape; it stops being a thought and starts being something you can feel in your legs as they tremble and still keep going.
The sturdy branches mattered. They made the climb possible, but they also made it honest. A branch that holds you teaches you to trust something outside yourself; a branch that looks too far teaches you to negotiate with fear without admitting you’re doing it. Somewhere in that oak’s architecture, Brian Foster learned how to talk himself forward one decision at a time.
The Top Wasn’t a Place—It Was Proof
Reaching the top didn’t turn Brian Foster into someone else. It simply confirmed something he was trying to believe: that he could begin a hard thing and finish it. The point wasn’t the view, even if there was one. The point was the final stretch where the tree thinned out, where every choice felt more serious, and where turning back would have been its own kind of answer.
And when he finally got there—whatever “there” meant in that oak’s highest, kid-reachable crown—it wasn’t about being the bravest kid on the block. It was about being the kid who could say, quietly and truthfully, I did it. That’s the kind of sentence that lasts. It follows you into later years, into bigger climbs with less bark and more consequences, and it still sounds like 1990 if you listen closely enough.
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About the Storyteller
Brian Foster
Memory from 1990