I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.
Last week’s storms were especially brutal on my hometown, rearranging gardens, redistributing plastic Adirondack chairs, and removing tall, old trees from their safe homes rooted within East Berwick’s backyards. I was unprepared as I walked through the garage and breathed in the full sight of my grandparents’ majestic 64-year-old Norway maple lying in the yard, split right down the middle, with the leaves from the tippiest-top resting now on the ground. I’ve been swinging among wistfulness, overwhelm, and a forest of other emotions all week.
If I’ve learned anything over the last several years, it’s that trees fall down. Change happens. Landscapes look different, and adaptation becomes a whether-you-like-it-or-not type of requirement. Often, as a matter of fact, I don’t like it. That is, however, irrelevant.
This particular change in this particular landscape hit me harder than I expected, and I’ve been counting the rings of why ever since. Is it the emotional attachment that runs in my veins from the youngest age, the same which caused me to feel some kind of way towards anything, living or not, that crossed my path? I still chastise my mother in gift shops if she wants to purchase a sole item that’s obviously part of a set (…what will the other one do!?) Is it because this illustrious tree came down on my brother’s birthday, and I’m now under a self-imposed expectation to figure out what that means? Is it just because I’m TIRED of re-evaluating the landscape, already?
I think it roots from another level deeper. I am overcome by just how much these trees have seen - what gentle and steadfast respite they offer to anyone who lingers under their canopies, or builds a nest within their branches, or strings lights among their boughs. The attachment to and security beneath these grand living beings seem especially reliable, something one would never have to be concerned would fail one day. With their loyal companionship and protection also came the ease with which they held all of us when we scurried up their trunks and branches as small children, knees scraped and shoes untied, to rest and soak up the peacefulness within. My grandmother attached a face to one of their trunks, my brother fell out of another one, many a victory were claimed by those who reached the highest branches first. (This weekend, at 38, I recognized that would no longer be me - first, or ever. I have the bruises to show for it.) Watching these pieces be cut up and hauled away, leaving a hole in my vantage point and in my insides, seems like another loss of another old friend.
And so to see these behemoths fall feels like the ground is sinking beneath my steps, literally and otherwise, another example of the scenery shifting and a looming reminder of a new route I’ll have to learn. Growing pains are physical pains as kids, but they feel more like emotional bruises for adults. Just before one heals, another tree falls, and we’re back on our feet, adjusting our stance until the ground firms again.
Bruce Springsteen offers a lamentation of a similar happening in his own life and describes it beautifully, as usual, in his signature style within his Broadway show from 2017. It’s linked below for you so you can enjoy it in its entirety, but these lines are specially meaningful in this context.
I rolled slowly another 50 yards up my block to visit my great tree, and it was gone. It had been cut to the street since the last time I drove through. So I got out of the car and I looked down and there was a square of musty earth that held the remaining snakes of its roots on the edge of a parking lot. So I reached down, I picked up a handful of dirt and I just kind of ran it through my hands. And my heart sank like, like a kid who had suffered some irretrievable loss. You know, like some, some piece of me was gone. Um... I don't know. I guess I... It was just it had been there long before I was. I assumed it would be there long after I was gone. And I liked that. It felt eternal. It was at the center of our street and it had rooted our neighborhood for so long.
He goes on to remind us that everything I’m currently grasping for - memories of people, days long gone, easier times - aren’t being driven away on the back of the tree service’s truck along with these branches. That’s a tough lesson when the evidence is staring at you with chainsaws running in the background, but it makes it no less true. Just more practice, another tool in my tool belt to carry on down my path - and I suppose, fewer leaves to rake.
The Corner Inspo -
what I’m learning : den·drol·o·gy (/denˈdräləjē/) noun : the scientific study of trees.
what I’m reading : Tenderheart, by Hetty Lui McKinnon. This is such an engaging cookbook honoring family heritage and vegetables, perfect for summer.
what I’m listening to : Bruce’s introduction to “Born to Run” is a small bit of genius within the masterpiece that is his Broadway show. The intro is linked below for you; the whole show is on Netflix and emphatically worth your time.
what I’m listening to : the damned (July 2?) fireworks, while I try to turn up every other sound inside my house to keep sweet Stella from shaking. Fireworks are dumb.
what I’m watching : season three of The Bear, on FX/Disney Plus/Hulu - 35m per episode of supreme television about the intersection of cooking and grief.
what Ruthie’s doing : celebrating her fourth birthday with little pupcakes and an awful lot of time spent zonked out on the porch chaise in the sunshine.
