There have been so many trees in my life that stand as landmarks. I remember sitting in the dirt under one of the great big maple trees on my street in Toronto. I would have been about 9 or 10 I guess. I used the maple keys to make the most beautiful and detailed picture of a house (at least it was marvelously arty in my view). We had a pear tree in our backyard that attracted tons of yellow jackets every summer and I am sorry I didn't know enough to can the pears, they were delicious if you could dodge the bees.
When I was in my teens I worked at a summer camp, YMCA Camp Norval, outside Toronto. I loved being there, felt like being in the country and it was a big comfort to me to have friends and a place to go besides home. There was a huge maple tree by the pool that turned so brilliant in the fall it could hurt you.
We have a cottage and when I was a kid we would drive up, starting the May long weekend. The trees leaned out over the water and dropped their leaves into the lake all fall. On the weekend all of us kids wanted to go swimming but we were afraid of the gucky stuff. Our dock had two sides: the swimming side and the gucky side and you did not want to fall into the gucky side.It was soft and mushy under foot and loaded with such horrors as crayfish and leeches. Gluhhhhh!!! My dad bravely waded into the swimming side and kicked those leaves away so we had a sandy touch down every year. By the way; the water was freezing but we were going in no matter what, blue lips be damned.
At university in Peterborough (possibly one of the most lovely places in Ontario) I fell in love with a tree that was on the back road from my boyfriend's rural rental to the University. I can't remember what kind of tree it was but I used to treat it as a kind of touchstone, and when I went back years later it was on the list of things I looked up and reached out for.
I have climbed numerous trees, been lonely without trees in cities and always loved the way trees smell - pine trees at Lake O'Hara in the summer heat and the smell of damp leaves on the ground during trick or treating with my boy, been attracted to the patterns the leaves make on the grates around the trees in downtown Summerland and stood entranced while watching a Mountain Ash being stripped of berries by a flock Cedar Waxwings.
Currently I have three favorite trees. Outside my apartment window is a maple tree, red maple to be exact. It provides shade to my place all summer, the only shady upper apartment and in the spring I watch the Yellow Rumped Warblers migrate through the yard while picking food off the budding leaves. Robins often stop to squabble in the branches during mating season and the sparrow babies who are big enough to feed themselves play helpless while the harried parent searches for food to stuff them with. (They are pretty funny to watch as they flap their seemingly helpless wings and cry for mother. Fakers of the worst kind but too funny.) My other two faves are across the road on the edge of the neighbors property. They are tall and lean and I see them all the time used as windbreaks on farm acreages. Usually in a line marching up the driveway and protecting the house. Those two trees have starred in many of the photographs I have taken from my deck as has the aforementioned maple tree .
Yesterday a tree cutting company was cutting and shredding the shrub pines at the base of the neighbors trees. I briefly thought "Oh no, hope the big guys aren't coming down.' Sure as shootin' I heard the chain saw going this morning and by supper those two beautiful trees were chopped to their stumps. I feel like I have lost two dear and well loved friends.
Last year a couple bought a house on the route I take to work.One of the finest features of this unremarkable place was the row of lilacs that edged the property along the road. Came by one day on my way to work to see the new owner hacking them all down. I may have groaned or made a verbal complaint but it is their property do with as they like. All this destruction makes me so sad. Sad for myself, sad for the people who don't appreciate the beauty of the trees and sad for the world as more and more rain forest falls to capitalistic purpose and plants, animals and humans are threatened with extinction.
I wish I had a snappy round up for this blog but I don't. I am however reminded of the Lorax and his love of the trees and his warning..."Unless...
Goodbye dear friends, goodbye!!!!
