Felling

 

The Tree Men are here today. 

Five lean lumberjacks ready to scramble up and trim some overhanging branches threatening to intrude on our neighbors roof in a large windstorm.  I will miss them.  I didn’t think I would, but now I know I will.

It’s not often I can feel the earth move under my feet while sitting in my living room.  The branch thunders down after a chainsaw severs it from the rest of the tree and then it is chipped and sent sailing into a holding bin.

Wow.

The trees are naked, beige and spindly and all around is white: the ground, the sky, the road… everything is white with a bit of the beige tree bark.  These are not my favorite colors.  The range is quietly disappointing.  But it is warm.  Well, warmer than it was.  My Oregon friends would never call this warm, but to us over here wrapping ourselves in blankets like fuzzy burritos – it’s so warm.

Of course that makes for slick tracks walking down the road at an incline.  Even though I have small cleats that pop out under my boots for days like this, I still look for the crunchy snow, the bits of gravel, the chunky spots so I don’t slip.

Because falling has gotten more costly.  It’s never fun, but lately it has become scary.  My aging body is not so spry or quick to forgive and so slow I go. 

I remember in high school trying to play the age I am now in theatre class.  Mr. Markworth put plastic wrap over our eyes and had us walk around the auditorium.  We inevitably hunched over and reached for railings.  This was a revelation to me – that old people moved differently because they couldn’t see or couldn’t bend or couldn’t balance or had a fear that they would break something if they fell, so they go carefully.

Some trees get to grow old and spread and twist and find their way to the skies and under the earth.  Some are blown over by storms or struck by lightning and burned.  And others are cut down because they interfere with or endanger the lives of humans, the supposed caretakers of the earth.

We bring our metal teeth at exhilarating speeds and bite through your mass and mince you into little bits.  But these bits foster new life on my garden and Dave’s flower beds and my dear elderly neighbors will no longer feel threatened from the next gust from the north.

I will miss the piles of golden leaves.  I will miss their towering presence.  What stories could they tell?

Of boys playing in the dirt at their feet

Of candlelit talks on the table under their boughs

Of robin song and leaf flutter

Of snow, wind, rain and frost

Of the many comings and goings on foot because I live and work and eat in this small world

Of the arrivals and departures of my beloved family in the old van, the Honda Pilot and the zippy Mazda

Of imagination and grounding and dreaming on a bright picnic blanket

Of a long table supper for Donovan’s graduation

Of the day the first tree fell by a gust of wind from the west

Of Joel laying down the new boardwalk with slats on the angle

Of Davey tending to the flowers and lining their beds with stones from our travels

Of bees and butterflies and wasps and spiders

Of creeping clematis and honeysuckle and day lilies and columbine

Of Weston helping to arrange small worlds of variety and story into a planter for Mother’s Day

Of snow men and hail

Of ice tea and lemonade

Of poppies and straw flowers, tulips and flax

May their memories live on in our hearts and whisper joy and life to the next generation of dwellers