NUMBERING OUR YEARS IN TREES
A Widow Bit – Dec. 7, 2008
By Mary Koch

            It’s that time of year when trees start popping up inside houses, a custom rich in symbology. My husband loved decorating the Christmas tree, especially stringing the lights. I won’t put one up this year – not out of sadness, but out of recognition that an ornamented tree would be a disastrous lure for my lively and quick, six-month-old puppy.

            I too am a hugger of trees, but of a different temperament. It hurt when I heard the whine of chainsaws permeate our neighborhood last fall as the oldest of the maples that line our street were removed. Trees are not forever; like everything else in creation, they age and die. We humans must occasionally intervene and shorten a tree’s lifespan lest it rot, fall and bury us in our homes.

            When you live in an area where logging and orchards have provided the traditional economic base, you understand trees are necessarily expendable. Even the apple trees get cut when they’re no longer profitable.

            But I believe the toppling of any tree should include something of a ceremony – an opportunity to give thanks, to acknowledge that for decades this tree provided shade and air purification, not to mention lodging for generations of small creatures.

            Just like counting rings on a tree stump, I could count my years in this house by listing the trees. When John and I moved in 24 years ago, there was only one tree on the lot – a giant blue spruce that tilted threateningly over our neighbors’ home. Ultimately, it had to go.

            But there’s a tree for every year we – now I – have been here, our own urban forest. Our first planting was to continue the parade of vintage maples that marched up the street and stopped abruptly at our lot line. We put in three young maples across the front of our yard.  I remember thinking then, I can hardly wait until they’re big shade trees – ignoring the fact that I’d be aging equal number of years as the trees grew.

            Now the trees give expansive shade, and sure enough, I’m older. But at least these trees stand in place of the three that were removed from down the block. It’s as if the maples are playing some kind of slow-motion leapfrog up the street.

            I look at 100-year-old photos of this town, this very spot on the river where I now live, and there’s not a tree in sight. I’ve read how the pioneer women organized to plant shade trees throughout the dusty little town, hand-carrying buckets of water to irrigate them. Their legacy continues with volunteers who, to this day, plant trees in our parks and along streets, so that now our town is officially recognized as a Tree City USA.

            It seems to me, that all one has to do to ensure a legacy for the next generation, to give meaning to one’s own life, is plant a tree. Everything else is extra credit.