Front Porch Conversations: One tree among many lost

It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!
—John Muir
Wilderness explorer and writer

By STEPHANIE PORTER-NICHOLS/Staff

A loud crash was the noise I would have expected to hear, but only some cracking and popping and large thump interrupted my preparations for a lunchtime date with my husband last Saturday.
However, the outside noise did compete with Jimmy Buffet’s songs emanating from the stereo. The prospects of Margaritaville, or at least a Cheeseburger in Paradise, had motivated my morning housework. Cranking the music also kept the roar of winter winds, a sound that wears on my soul, from breaking my weekend mood.
My intentional blissful ignorance of the winds did nothing, however, to stop their destruction.
Searching out the cause for the odd noises didn’t take long. A glance out the window revealed a 50-foot tree upended, only feet from the house, crushing a smaller maple, an infrequently used clothesline and a power line.
Seconds later I stood outside staring at the massive pine. Grateful that it had missed the house, I was still shocked to see something so stately piercing the ground with its limbs. As I circled the tree that had only moments before reached beyond the second floor of my home, I felt an odd sadness.
Why, I wondered, would I feel a sense of loss for one tree on a property that’s home to hundreds? It wasn’t as if it was a dignified oak that stood rooted there for generations.
Nostalgia perhaps? The tree was one of a wind break that had framed my first view of the old cabin on a starry Christmas Eve. In a matter of days, we would celebrate 15 years of living in the cabin and on land peppered with pines.
The loss of trees has been a regular occurrence through those years. Heavy snows, ice storms, wind and time have taken their toll.
Was this one different because of its proximity to the cabin? Images of trees lying across houses were still fresh in my mind from the storms that had struck Big Stone Gap only days earlier.
Sunday afternoon was dedicated to dissecting the tree into manageable brush piles and wood stacks. I took a moment to finger a crushed late-blooming crocus that only the previous morning I had delighted in discovering under the row of trees.
With individual limbs bigger than many Christmas trees, the process required hard physical labor, which produced its own odd sensations by creating a layer of hot sweat on cold skin. Humor lightened the day when à la Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation, I ran my pine resin-soaked glove through my hair.
Our yard and even our piles of laundry still provoke thoughts of Christmas with their strong balsam-like smell.
Despite the many holiday references, the event didn’t seem akin to a celebration of Christ’s birth. It was, certainly, another reminder of the fragility of life even for a deeply rooted tree.
At its essence though, wind and moisture brought down a softwood tree.
As I write those words, however, a refrain from the Nobel-prize winning poet Rabindranath Tagore enters my mind. “Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.“
Without a doubt, we will plant another tree or perhaps two. A hopeful gesture that seems especially appropriate as Easter draws near.

Stephanie Porter-Nichols is the editor of the Smyth County News & Messenger.