Back in the early 90’s I bought a very small house in an older neighborhood in St. Paul about 3 blocks from the Mississippi River. One of the things I love about this neighborhood is all the trees. As you drive down most any street this time of year, you are passing through a canopy of bright green.
The house I bought was the “fixer-upper” in the neighborhood and really didn’t have much to distinguish it…except for one thing…the 80 foot 100 year-old elm tree in the tiny back yard. This thing was mammoth, with branches spanning the back yards of both next-door neighbors on either side. I would regularly stand underneath it, look up at its majesty, and feel that sense of awe at being part of a world that included such beauty. Since the houses in the neighborhood were built about 60 years ago, this tree had witnessed all of its history, beginning in a time when cows would probably have found shade under its branches.
After surviving all that, including the epidemic of dutch elm disease in the 70’s and 80’s and 80 mph straight line winds that hit the neighborhood while I was here, about 2 years ago whole branches started going brown. And before I knew it, she was gone…a victim of dutch elm disease finally. One of the things I learned from all this is that if there is something in your life that means this much to you, take lots of pictures. I don’t have a single one of her in full bloom, and now I’ll never get that opportunity. But here’s one after she shed her leaves in the fall. To give you some perspective, the line across the center bottom of the picture is the roof of my house.
The process of taking her down was probably one of the most fascinating and disturbing things I have witnessed. Here’s just a sampling of what that looked like.
They used a 90 ft. crane to drop a guy into the tree where one-by-one he attached the 30-40 foot limbs to the crane and sawed them off til she looked like this.
And then she was gone.
That weekend, I spent most of my time grieving and crying. It surprised me what the loss of this great old girl meant to me. My neighbors almost daily asked if I was going to get another tree. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. I needed to look at that empty hole in my yard for awhile, just to pay homage to what had been.
Then, this last holiday season, my brother and sister-in-law let me know that they wanted to get me a new tree as a gift. After almost two years, I was ready. My brother did alot of research about trees and after talking, we decided on an autumn blaze maple.
Last night, on the most beautiful day of this spring so far, we planted her.
That’s Pax (my shih tzu) welcoming her new best friend.
All day long as I was anticipating this ritual, I thought of the significance and analogies of planting this tree. You might be able to tell that there’s still a hole behind her where the old one stood. Every few days the decomposing of her roots produces clusters of mushrooms. They appear and then disappear as the rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, or birds feast on them. So she’s still contributing to the life of this neighborhood.
But I wonder what this new tree will witness over the years of her life, like the old girl did. She’s likely to outlive me, or at least my time here in this house. I think of the quote I’ve used so often here from Rubem Alvez
What is hope? It is the presentiment that imagination is more real and reality less real than it looks. It is the suspicion that the overwhelming brutality of fact that oppresses us and represses us is not the last word. It is the hunch that reality is more complex than the realists want us to believe, that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual, and that, in a miraculous and unexpected way, life is preparing the creative events which will open the way to freedom and to resurrection.
But, hope must live with suffering. Suffering, without hope, produces resentment and despair. And hope, without suffering, creates illusions, naiveté, and drunkenness. So, let us plant dates (trees?), even though we who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see.
This is the secret of discipline. Such disciplined love is what has given saints, revolutionaries, and martyrs the courage to die for the future they envision; they make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope.
and I think I’ll name my new tree “Hope.”
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even though its about a weeping willow instead of a maple.
about a block away from me behind and over top of a bus stop. The trunk at it’s base is about twice as wide as I am tall, and I’m 6’1″. It must be 4 or 5 hundred years old, if not more. It’s majestic, and it looks happy all the time.
and witnessed much of both good and bad forestry practices. The forest I worked in is particularly dry, steep and rocky causing the trees to grow very slowly. One particular Ponderosa pine about 5 feet in diameter and 125 feet tall was cut down and taken to the sawmill. That one tree contained enough wood to completely build a moderately sized two-bedroom house. Using a hand lens, I counted her rings and she was approximately 300 years old when Columbus arrived.
Over the course of several years, my crews and I planted about 2 million trees in that forest.
Optimists plant trees. All trees are hope. Gaia loves tree-planters.
Was about 1 mile square, and had elms planted all up and down every street. They weren’t that old, 60-80 when I was growing up, but arched over all the streets of town in an incredible green canopy. The canopy did an excellent job of shading and cooling the town in 100 plus degree summers. The town was even called “The City of Trees”. Dutch elm disease hit and with in a few short years, the town was denuded, berift of all those magnificant trees. There were other species of trees of course, but the loss of probably 60 to 70 per cent of the citie’s trees was horrific. I can fully appreciate the loss of your big, old elm, and the choice of a maple to replace it.
… to take shelter in today … what with all the usual bad news.
Glad you have your new tree planted.
Wow, feels like a garden in here!
Hee.
tree’s had a much better grasp of the divine if you ask me. I live in tree hugging land, Oregon. As I write I look out my window and see my old friend a giantic maple. I see it from my bed when I wake up and from my studio where I work. It marks the seasons, it has cured me when sick, inspired me when working, it a remarkable source of joy, hope, humility and solace.
We take our tree’s seriously here. Permits are required to take one out, it has to be for disease not whim or landscaping. The city offers wonderful tree’s for parking strips without one at a low cost and even helps plant them. I wish your new tree a happy life, it sure looks like it has a good home.
That’s a bittersweet story with a happy ending. Glad you have a new tree to watch over you.
Maybe you can take a picture once a month to see her growth over time and seasons. She’ll be a beauty in the Fall no doubt.
i hugged a tree. knocked me out. the power and life force of one little peach tree. i had planted it in my grandfather’s back yard. it got torn out of the ground by the men he hired to build him a new house. one of the worst days of my life as a kid.