Just a few warm days in February will melt winter’s illusions. Now I see clearly the six giant tree stumps, remnants of a late-fall massacre.
The shortest of them is knee-high, and the tallest reaches my waist. On a gloomy afternoon last November my daughter first saw them and cried, “The Lorax!” — a reference to the Dr. Seuss fable about the evils of clear-cut logging. It was published the year she was born, and we read it to her when she was a child; when she became a mother with two sons of her own, she read it to them.
Deep snow had softened the view from our porch, turning the stumps into whimsical sculptures, but now the truth is back.
In the summer of 1976 we walked this land imagining where we might site a house, and 80 yards from the spot we chose stood a single prominent tree, a pasture pine already 30 or 40 feet tall and gangly the way pasture pines grow when they have room to sprawl.
A year later we camped on the land, and my wife and I began clearing thorn apples from the hillside where we would build. Our children were 6 and 3, so I hung a tire swing from the pine where they could play while we worked.
A year later, when the house was done, the tree became a playground big enough to amuse them and their cousins and friends. I re-purposed a sandbox they’d outgrown and bolted it into a crotch of the tree high above the ground for a platform they could climb to, and over the years I added more swings and a trapeze.
As our children grew, the tree grew and changed, and by the time they left home for good, its value was more symbolic than practical. Many years passed, and with the arrival of grandchildren the tree once again became a playground. I hung new swings from the same branches where their parents had played, and for a while I believed this generational dance could go on forever. But now the tree is gone.
One morning in 2012, just a day or two after Christmas, we woke to see that the weight of heavy snow had split a third of the tree from its base and thrown it to the ground. The two thirds that remained, still bigger than the tree we first met in 1976, looked fine, but it was clear to my wife and me that we were likely to outlive this tree.
A few weeks later I sawed what had fallen into pieces, and in spring, when the ground was firm, carted the pieces into the woods to rot.
Last summer, when I saw a widening gap between the two remaining shafts of the trunk and noticed that two of the swings were hanging closer to the ground than I remembered, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before another third of the original tree came down. I thought about getting my saw, but sentimentality and laziness prevailed until a still afternoon in October when it tumbled, swings and all, in proverbial silence while we were away doing errands.
Once again, the section that remained looked stable and its swing safe, but I knew this was the end. I stood at the base of the remaining tree and tried to imagine how I could saw through it without killing myself or having it fall the wrong way.
A few days later my son came over with his saw, and together we worked on the fallen section, two men and two saws, reducing it to pieces we could carry. When we were done, there were at least a hundred of them scattered on the ground, and I knew I would need professional help to finish the job.
There are moments when paradigms shift right under your feet. The tree had changed twice in our minds, but this one was titanic. I took a few steps back, and with the sweet smell of sawdust swirling around me, I noticed the five additional pasture pines that had grown up around us through the years and wondered what the hill would look like with all of them gone. It would cost a fortune, of course, but there would be economy in having them all cut at once. Then the land would be open the way it had been in 1976 when we first arrived, minus the one sentimental tree, of course.
In truth, the others had grown almost as big as the swing tree, blocking a little more sun every year and making a tunnel of our view from the porch. With them gone, a veil would lift. Yes, it would be expensive, but the aesthetic gain would be worth it. After talking to my wife, I made a phone call.
Now when spring arrives, I will begin sawing the six stumps to ground level. It will be slow and exhausting work, and just a little bit dangerous. None of them are perfectly round, and at their widest points they measure between 4 and 6 feet across. The blade of my chain saw is a mere foot and a half, so I will have to take them apart in sections, a little like slicing pieces from a wedding cake. Before I have finished the first tree, I will have wondered if this is a good use of my time.
Back in October, when we returned from our errands and saw half of our beloved tree lying on the ground, I slowly circled the wreckage and was surprised to see that neither swing had been damaged in the fall. Their ropes had bitten into the limbs they hung from, but I could easily undo the knots and pull them free. The ropes themselves were fine, without wear or fray. My granddaughter had already outgrown the infant seat, so I put it away; but a few days later I dropped the tire swing off at my son’s house.
That evening I heard a toot from my phone and knew it would be a text from one of our children.
Sure enough, it was from my son — a single picture I thought at first, but it turned out to be a short burst of video: my granddaughter on the tire swing, now hung from a tree in their yard, swinging back and forth in extreme slow motion with a blissful look on her face.
Jonathan Stableford lives in Strafford.