The Triangle Beside the Tree

Chapter 1Three Mountains

At the supervised school garden visit, Rebbi handed each pair a paper map.

The group would stay together on the approved path. Nobody was to search the garden alone.

Yanky noticed three little triangles on the map.

"Mountains," he told Motti. "This garden must have hills."

From the entrance, the garden looked flat.

Yanky liked the thought of a hidden mountain more than a flat garden.

He drew a tiny climber beside one triangle on his own observation page.

Chapter 2The Flat Path

The class followed Rebbi past the first flower bed.

A triangle appeared on the map beside a tree. Beside the real tree stood a low bench.

No hill rose behind it.

"Perhaps the mountain is farther back," Yanky whispered.

Motti looked at the paper.

"The triangle is right here."

Yanky began wondering whether the map was wrong.

He had seen triangles mean mountains on another picture. He had not checked what they meant on this map.

Chapter 3A Small Box of Marks

Rebbi asked the boys to read the key printed at the map's bottom.

A triangle stood beside the word BENCH.

A circle meant a flower bed. A dashed line showed the walking path.

Yanky looked from the key to the bench.

The map had not promised mountains. It used a simple mark to show somewhere to sit.

His tiny climber had reached a triangle made of pencil, not a hill made of earth.

Motti smiled but did not laugh at him.

Chapter 4The Next Triangle

At the next marked place, Yanky checked the key before explaining.

"Another bench."

The class reached it with Rebbi.

This bench curved around the edge of a bed rather than standing straight beside a tree.

Yanky did not insist the map had to draw its exact shape. The triangle named the kind of place, not every plank.

He added BENCH beside his climber on the observation page.

The little figure could have a rest.

Chapter 5A Different Map

Back at school, Rebbi showed another teacher-provided paper map.

Its triangular marks represented different things, explained in that map's own key.

Yanky nearly announced that all triangles meant benches now.

He stopped and read.

The new map used triangles for picnic tables.

Changing his first answer had not given him one meaning for every triangle everywhere.

He copied the second map's symbol with its own label, keeping the two examples apart.

Chapter 6Where the Climber Sat

Motti pointed to the observation page before they put it away.

"Your climber never climbed."

"He learned to read the key," Yanky said. "Then he sat on a bench."

The garden had been flat and interesting. They had seen a striped beetle and a gate shaped like branches.

Yanky put those observations beneath the map notes.

His page no longer needed an invented mountain to make the visit worth remembering. The triangle could do the job this map had given it.