I love trees. I’ve been called a tree hugger and a flower child, and neither one insults me. Trees fascinate me, especially the really old ones. When I look at one, I can’t help but imagine all that’s happened in the space around it while it’s been growing. How many storms has it weathered? How many birds have made their homes in its branches? How many kids have climbed it, or stopped to play underneath it? Trees are living pieces of history.
Trees are the reason I fell in love with our house. Because, seriously, no one could have actually fallen in love with our house when we first bought it. It was a smelly, ugly, dump really. But the yard was amazing. There were dozens of big, old trees. There were two huge maples that shaded the front yard and offered a welcome separation from the busy highway. There was an enormous sycamore with great big leaves and peeling white bark. There was a big fat ash tree in the backyard whose branches draped down just enough to create a sort of covered patio where there wasn’t a patio at all, and it had a branch that was just begging for a swing. There was a diagonal row of old tall cedar trees that shaded the back of the house and offered more privacy from both the highway and the gravel road behind the house as well. There were pines and a walnut tree and a flowering crab apple. There was a cherry tree that grew actual cherries, and if we could pick them before the birds did, they were awesome. The trees made me want the house. The trees did. I loved these trees so much, that when one of the big maples randomly contracted some weird kind of root rot and died, I paid nearly two weeks of my pay at the time to have a tree doctor come treat the second maple so it wouldn’t be next. My investment paid off. The tree avoided the disease. Over the years, lightening got the walnut tree and the sycamore just got too old and began to die, little by little, until we finally had to admit defeat and take it down.
A week ago tomorrow a storm came through. In a matter of seconds, the second maple, the oak, the cherry (which was covered with a new crop of cherries), two of the big cedars, a pear tree that we planted twelve years ago and another smaller tree were all either uprooted or snapped off at their base. The storm happened late at night, and it wasn’t until the light of the next morning that we saw the new landscape of our yard. I cried like a baby. (read more about my problem with change here) Some of our neighbors lost roofs and barns and sheds and had damage to their cars. Our house stood untouched. Not one of the trees hit it. We were blessed, and I am grateful for that. But our trees are gone forever. Many well meaning people have made comments like, “At least all you lost were trees.” or “You can plant new trees.” Those people are right on both accounts. We still have all of our possessions and our LIVES. That point is not lost on me for a second.
But they are not “just” trees. Sure, we can plant new ones, but they will not shade our house in our lifetime. They won’t offer a sound barrier between our bedroom window and the noise of the highway. They won’t grow pretty red cherries every spring and they won’t look the same. That’s exactly why I love trees. They are unique and they are alive. Every one of them has a story and when they are sawed into firewood, it makes my heart hurt a little.
I keep telling myself that the new trees we plant will be the ones that make the next family want to buy our home someday. They will create their own stories and seventy or eighty years from now, another family will be dragging them out of the yard after a storm and starting over themselves. It’s all part of the circle of life, I know. But it’s the part of the circle that makes me sad. Because before every new beginning there has to be an end, and I don’t like endings.
(there is a bright side to this story. more on that later…)
