What is meant by viewing a tree as a chain of nodes?

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I was reading couple of articles on heavy light decomposition of trees. There I kept getting this chaining terms which I find very difficult to understand.

Could someone please explain how any tree not necessarily a binary tree and does not necessarily have a root and unordered CAN be viewed as just a chain of nodes ? (In simple language) A small example or code snippet would be highly appreciated.

Thanks.

Edit: I am referring to this article: https://blog.anudeep2011.com/heavy-light-decomposition/