Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 27, 1995 TAG: 9507190075
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That sensation may have been caused by hanging on to a growling chainsaw as I carved up the old soldier. I suspect, however, that it goes deeper.
The tree had been around much longer than I have and I've lived in the same place my entire life. When it fell during a storm, it squarely nailed an old swing set we used as children. The swing set hadn't been used in years. Yet we let it stand as some sort of physical connection to our youth, a time that has been receding as rapidly as our hairlines.
To have an old friendly tree collapse atop a symbol of your childhood - well, it was a bit of mortal overkill, more dramatically unsettling than seeing my 40-year-old face in the mirror each morning and counting the ever-increasing rings beneath my eyes.
I must say in its defense that the old tree - which was thick and squat in the truck and widely expansive of limb - did fall benevolently, twisting just enough at the base so that its boughs merely tickled the corner of our house. The only thing that fell beneath it was the telephone line, and it was repaired easily enough.
Clearing up the green mayhem was a real undertaking, however. I sawed and chopped and dragged and loaded for two days, and still the job's not over. I considered calling in the experts, but somehow that notion seemed expensive and rather indecent to boot. In the old days, family members would prepare their deceased kinfolk for burial by themselves.
The tree broke off cleanly at the base and you could see why it was toppled by a relatively minor thundergust. The base consisted of little more than wood pulp - obviously the tree had been dying for years; it was apparently being held up by a thin veneer of bark.
Lost in the monotony of hard labor and the incessant buzzing of the chainsaw, I had plenty of time for contemplation. And I learned empathy for my friend Mark, whose father died recently after a brief, ravaging battle with cancer.
Like the oak tree, his father stood dependably tall and strong for years and cast a wide shadow that helped to suppress the weeds around him. But the disease had been growing inside him long before anyone knew it, and by the time it was discovered, it was too late.
I shared a sense of loss as I worked. It's always sad to see a large tree fall and somewhat of a shock to see the naked sky it had always clothed. Like the passing of a venerable relative, it makes you take stock of your own life.
Still, I'm glad to have the opportunity to feel poignant about the oak tree. It reinforces my sense of place and my ties to home. I've moved around frequently from place to place during my young adulthood, yet never prospered in the soil elsewhere. I've always come back to where I was born, to family and long-time friends, to the roots.
In that spirit, I called up some of my homeboys and they came over to help clean things up. My accord was to give them pickup truck loads of nice, substantial oak wood for their stoves and fireplaces. This winter we'll have a series of wakes and be warmed by the old tree as we cremate it, log by log.
That thought made me feel better. So, too, did the anticipation of not having to rake up all the innumerable oak leaves come autumn - although I'd still rather have the tree.
Finally, I thought of Walt Whitman, the 19th-century American poet. Traveling and feeling homesick, he saw in Louisiana a live oak growing. "But I wondered how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not," he wrote. So Walt broke off a twig and put it in his room as a keepsake.
My late oak is no less meaningful to me, as a reminder of my home, my friends and the cycles of our lives.
by CNB