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| THE SPREADING BRANCHES OF AN OLD TREES ON ROSE'S PROPERTY |
April is Earth Month. And what on this great earth do I love more than trees?
I love the very names of trees; I even like to say those names: Sycamore and sassafras and tupelo... ironwood and hornbeam... magnolia, dogwood, osage orange and beechnut... butternut and buckthorn... black gum, slippery elm, thornapple, quaking aspen, pig nut hickory, harp-leafed willow, and speckled alder...
I love the sound of trees; they seem to have a voice. A tree provides the instrument for the staccato drumming of a woodpecker, and sets a summer stage for songbirds... A pine tree's branches swish and whisper in the wind... The dancing leaves of aspen in the summer rustle cheerfully as wind chimes... Trees creak and squawk as branches cross each other in November winds.... Old trees howl in bitter gales and snap-pop in the coldest depths of winter... The winter hemlock rings like sounded crystal as it shrugs the glass-like shards of winter ice from off its branches...
I love the skins and forms of trees... the bark of sycamore, mottled in the summer and smoothly bleached in winter... the "shingled" texture of the shag bark hickory... the warty worm-trail surface of the hack berry... the twisty, gnarled shape of vintage apple trees... the towering pyramid of tulip poplar, topped with leaves as large as human faces... the branches of a weeping willow on a torrid August night, lined and lit with fireflies... the leafy treetops sweeping stormy summer skies like giant brooms...
I HAVE NOT come late to this appreciation for the large perennial plant we call the tree. I am a city child of the 1940s and '50s, when our towns were filled with trees, and so it's true that trees adorn my memories.
We children of that era knew instinctively which trees were best for climbing and which would give the best support for tire-swings. We'd pull "Indian cigars" from off catalpa trees and pretend that we were smoking peace pipes. We'd collect the buckeyes from majestic buckeye trees which were so gloriously plentiful before they were declared to be a nuisance and were done away with...
Tarzan-like, I would swing from sturdy grapevines in a big tree far behind our house. A mulberry tree became our side-yard jungle gym, and my favorite spot for summer reading was in the spreading arms of an imposing maple tree that shaded our front porch...
AND NOW, in a sense, my youth is reincarnated in this creek-fed valley where I live. Admittedly I do not climb these trees; I don't swing Tarzan-like from tree to tree; and I don't sit in a high crook of a leafy tree to read as I did when I was growing up. I am no longer young enough for doing any of those things.
But I do live in a home that's tucked among the trees, and those trees grow close around me as if I'm living in a tree house.
What could be a better place for me to spend my days and nights? Age notwithstanding!
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| LIKE THIS TREE, ROSE IS NOT AS YOUNG AS SHE USED TO BE |
