We here in the North live in a world of trees. I myself sometimes declare that trees are my friends, and I mean it. I didnt grow up here, but in northern Indiana, right on the Michigan border, and in those days, farming was still pervasive in the area, and large stands of forest were rare. My dad always said if you have nothing to do, you can always plant a tree, and we planted trees often. In the mid fifties my elementary school provided tiny pine starts to the kids, and the twenty acre campus was planted all around the perimeter, staggered, three deep. The teachers told us how these trees would be there for a hundred years or more, and how, in the distant future we could visit these trees and marvel at their hugeness. Recently I returned to my old school and saw for myself that indeed, those little slips we planted were now eighty feet high and as big around as my body. The next year, my Dad and I planted Japanese Elms lining our drive way to our newly built house, and I marveled as the bundle of finger size sticks were separated and planted in rows. My Dad explained that these were not the best trees, but they grew fast, and in his lifetime he could expect to see a shady tree lined path there, and soon, such was the case. About ten years ago those little sticks were sixty feet tall and of great diameter, but had grown brittle and old. So, a new owner cut them down, and the place looks today, much as it did in 1957. I sometimes wish that I could have the life span of a great old tree, perhaps a Maple, that might live for several hundred years, because then I could watch the world change around me, and then change back again, over and over, and when things here seemed threatened, I would not be as disappointed and anxious, knowing what is to come. My problem is that I know no other way to gauge the changes I see, but to use my lifetime as the ruler, measuring events against a scale too small.
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 21:11:53 +0000
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