Ready to Go

"There was a great tree - a huge poplar with vast limbs - visible through my window even as I lay in bed. I loved it, and was anxious about it. It had been savagely mutilated some years before, but had gallantly grown new limbs - though of course not with the unblemished grace of its former natural self; and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled."  ~J.R.R. Tolkien

The big front yard maple finally came down today. All the branches had been taken off last November, and, in absence of anyone who could manage the trunk with a mere chain saw, the tree men returned today and took that away, too.

Ella and I watched through the gable window as the two fellows alternated at the base: chain saw, axe, toss the wedge of wood aside, chain saw, axe, toss. I expected this to go on all around the perimeter of the tree for the next hour, slow but sure. But just as Ella was losing interest in favor of the cord pull on the window blind, the unexpected happened. The entire enormous ten-foot thing creaked and groaned, gave a sharp crack, and fell into the road with a shuddering thump that set Pilot a-barking.

Last fall, I'd mourned as the branches came down: no more green leaves dancing at the upstairs window; that lovely play of sunlight and shadow shifting across the downstairs living room - gone. Not to mention the temperature protection during our unairconditioned summers. This loss felt inordinately tragic, both physical and emotional. But I thought all my sorrow had gone with the limbs. The remaining body in the yard was only a sad reminder, not to mention an eyesore. I was more than ready for it to go.

Imagine my surprise at the tears that sprang up this morning as the tree trunk fell - so suddenly, so heavily - down. It seemed so, so . . . irreverent. So wrong. Bottom-up, with all its striated glory - blossoming circles amassed over a 72 year life - exposed for the world to see. Suddenly, the grey bark running in stripes and curves and ending in contrast against that tan-white flesh was a surpassing beauty. The tree men seemed not to notice. They swung their axes and tossed the bits and pieces into the back of their flatbed. They took a break and lit cigarettes. For them, this was any day, any tree, any job.

Tolkien once wrote, "I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals." This morning, as the tree pitched over, I could hear the clanging and banging of Saruman's machinery, as it was so explicitly interpreted in the movies, and the ground-shaking thud at each felled tree. The neighbor who made a wide berth around the the equipment on her daily dog walk seemed to frown Tolkien's - or was it Treebeard's? - disappointment at me. "Those trees were my friends!" Darn that movie.

Still, I knew it was just a tree. I know it is just a tree. And it was dying, after all. These Norwegian Maples were planted when our three neighborhood streets were first developed, and none of them are going to last much longer. Each house got two, in fact, and a good third of them have gone down already. More than half of the ones left are dying. Windblown and ice-laden limbs fall into the streets where cars park and children on bikes race by. The resident tree expert says that, actually, there's only one healthy one left, back in a corner lot. He speculates about environmental incompatibility. Others have suggested bugs or disease. Whatever the root cause, the tree was sick and it was time to go.

But there's something to be said for putting in a three quarter century's work toward such a strong and quiet beauty. It doesn't seem like something that should go as easily - or, at least, as quickly - as fifteen minutes of sawing and chopping can do. It seemed, for a moment, that the tree should get something more than a cigarette smoke in tribute.

But really, for the tree, there is nothing that needs be done, or that could be done, save what we did. It is only a tree. But I know what I will do. I resolved this morning to plant another in its place. We'll do our research this time. We've been told something called the Black Oak does well in these parts. I also have a particular soft spot for Dogwoods. We'll start another in its place, and make our own contribution to this small patch of land and its future, and to the neighborhood it sits in. And then we'll get on with our day. With all respect to Tolkien and his master ent, it was only a tree, after all. It was ready to go.

ed. Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. p. 321, 220,