The Strange Wah of Trees

Dearborn Avenue Tree 

What is it about trees, anyway?  
Maybe it's just me, but trees are so much more than just there.
They don't say much, although when wind blows through birches, they can sing.

Maybe it's genetic, on my part. My paternal grandfather, I am told, was a lumberjack, or a forester or whatever you were, when you lived in the woods east of Moscow and cut down trees.   But then government men came around trying to impress woodsmen into the Czar's army, so he fled and wound up in New York City, far away from forests. 

Tree of Indeterminate Species

Maybe I got some of his amino acids in my DNA, which might explain how much I loved playing in the forests along the Potomac growing up.  

And what most impressed me, of all the many things which enthralled me when our family first traveled to New Hampshire, when I was 9, were the white birch trees we saw along the roads approaching Lake Winnipesaukee.  I discovered many splendific things about New Hampshire that trip--cools nights in the middle of August when nights were suffocating back in Washington, D.C., clear lake water, blueberry muffins--but those birch trees really captivated me. I brought four of them home, in the back of our Studebaker, a two day trip back to Washington, and I planted them in our back yard. Only one survived but it never turned white, growing in that red clay soil.

The first home I bought was in Maryland on less than 1/3 of an acre but it had a dozen sixty foot trees, and some of them did not look any too healthy and kept dropping limbs unnervingly near my house. Cutting down any one of these behemoths, I was told, would cost thousands of dollars. I was relieved to be able to leave them, when I moved to New Hampshire. I just knew one of those bad boys had my name on it. It was just a matter of time. 

I was determined to buy a new house with no big trees on the lot and the smallest possible lawn to mow. Of course, I wound up with 1 1/3 acres this time and a forest covering the back acre, with hundreds of sixty foot trees, but none of them appear to be within striking distance of my house.

I spent part of the afternoon today cutting dead limbs from a tree in our front yard. This required ladders and ropes and saws and precarious dangling from branches, but I got it done. 

Some limbs looked very dead, but inexplicably, fresh healthy branches sprout near the tips of these moribund limbs. Dead and living portions of the same tree seem to co exist in a way never seen in human anatomy. If there is no blood supply to your arm beyond the elbow, then anything downstream from your elbow, namely your wrist and fingers are going to be dead.  Not so with trees. They seem to follow their own rules. Sap flows in mysterious ways.

My neighbor stopped to ask if I was cutting down the tree. No, I told her, just a few limbs, appearances notwithstanding. 

Wonky Parallel Tree

"Oh, I'm so relieved," she said. "I love that wonky tree. It's like it grows parallel to the ground, instead of up."

When I first moved to Hampton, I wanted a Norway Maple: I saw these wonderful trees with their maroon leaves in the front yards of homes and churches all around town. The owner of Stratham Circle Nursery told me they were illegal in New Hampshire. Cannot sell them, buy them or even load them into your truck and bring them across the state line.
"How can they be illegal?" I protested. "I see them all around town."
"They passed a law," he said with an expression which bespoke what he thought of that law.
A few weeks later, my neighbor called me from the North Hampton Home Depot. He had spotted three Norway Maples on their lot, obviously delivered by mistake and the Home Depot guys had no idea they were selling the horticultural equivalent of crack cocaine.

Did I want to go get them in his truck? 
Did I ever. 
We bought the trees in cash, so they couldn't trace us. 
We drove home, careful to keep to the speed limit, as if we had a truck full of cocaine. I kept my eyes on the sideview mirrors and we held our breath as a Hampton police car drove by us.

He planted one in his backyard and I planted the other two in my back yard, out of view of the street.
Of such victories is life made sweet.

New Hampshire's trees are the source of its busiest tourist season. Leaf peepers arrive every October, filling every inn and hotel room, and causing traffic jams from Franklin Notch to the White Mountains. People like trees.  And it's not like trees do much. They are more or less just...rooted. 

There are some trees, I am told, which were alive when Jesus Christ walked the earth. I don't know if that's true, but I do believe trees can live a long time and I've seen some trees in California which have survived forest fires because their bark is so thick. Trees outlasted the dinosaurs.

People have feelings about trees. 

My other neighbor had a gorgeous stand of birch trees on his front lawn. He claimed it had boring beetles or some infestation,  and was doomed. I made him promise to let nature take its course. You never know, I told him--those trees may rally yet. 

He waited until I went on vacation to cut it down. 

When I returned, I didn't even unpack my car.  I stomped across his driveway and pointed at the stumps: Tree murderer! 

He smiled and shook his head, "Hey, I waited until you were gone. You didn't have to see it."

He was right. That was something to be grateful for.