We were too late in giving the tree the respect and attention my father had modeled so well.
My father, on extended visits during his later years (he died in early 2015 at age 98), was given to enjoying the same simple pleasures that he’d savored all his life.
Not the least of which was time with trees. Where earlier in his life he had hiked through the forest at a pace that would allow him to stop, identify and treasure the oaks and maples, the hemlocks and Virginia pines—even the chestnuts far back in his long life—in his last years he would settle himself on our screened back porch to follow the cycles of one particular tree.
The tulip poplar next to the garage provided initial delight as it began to leaf out in spring. Even more sublime to him were those big yellow blossoms, which he appreciated both for their beauty and for their tie to his days as a beekeeper who won countless ribbons at county and state fairs for his honey. The tulip poplar was one source of nectar for the occupants of the 40 or so hives he kept for many years.
Into the spring air and onto that open, beautiful porch that he enjoyed as if his daughter-in-law had created it just for him, he would take his morning coffee, his modest lunch or his evening wine and sit quietly sometimes for more than an hour, drinking in the bounty and blessings of the big poplar that he appreciated to a degree that made it seem that it too had been placed there just for him. His doting on the tree was not a product of age or a failing mind; it was in fact no different from the perspective at any stage of life for an eccentric, nature-loving person.
Over the years since he left us, Gail and I have paid more attention to that tree—both in his honor and in our own growing admiration for its high-arching shade onto the house from the summer sun.
But it was our failing that as we picked up occasional pieces of bark after a thunderstorm or a windy day, we did not better inspect our tree, that we did not go stand next to it and look up at its trunk and branches and leaves. No, we learned to do that over the recent weeks standing next to four different arborists who pointed here and there, who talked about the big wound and if lightning might have caused it, who used words like callous and canker as they gently allowed us to learn about our tree and to decide its fate.
One of the four arborists said there could be some trimming and thinning to better allow the wind to pass through the upper limbs of the weakened tree, but he talked in terms of a few years. And the other three were gently adamant—the wound was too big and the risk of fall too great to let the tree stand any longer.
In the end, the big poplar, a fixture in our backyard for all of our nearly 30 years in the home it shaded, and a survior of the 2012 derecho that had taken out an oak not 50 feet from it—in the end the big poplar got strapped and roped up as young men as lithe and strong as a healthy tree at mid-life made their way up it and began to cut away at its limbs and lower them gently into the yard.
We’ll plant a new tree this fall—likely a tulip poplar—and begin again the cycle that will give some future occupants of the house the chance to think about its shade and beauty.
But much as there will never be another like the old man who admired the tree so deeply, Gail and I will never again get the chance to appreciate—even too late as we did with this one—another tree so grand, so close, so precious.
The story above is from our November/December 2019 issue. For more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you for your support!