The Daily "Lucky"
When we cut down the diseased and dying blue spruce just off the front deck three years ago, I knew the gaping hole it left behind in the sky would make me all melancholy and wistful. It had been well-established by the time we unpacked and moved our stuff inside the closet-less rooms of our new-old bungalow farmhouse. The tree anchored the front yard and stretched its spiny arms beyond the metal roof. Our first and beloved kitten, Scout (god, we miss him still, after five years gone) figured the view was better from the top, so up he went until he ran out of branches. He perched, wobbly but brave, amidst the gray-green needles, mewling until we noticed and brought him down on the business end of a long-handled straw broom stretched out via Patrick’s arm. He jumped, slid along the handle to our waiting hands, and trotted off to his food dish by the stove. One of many Scout adventures that year (remind me to tell you about the time a turkey vulture almost carried him off. Or have you heard that one already? No matter—it’s just as good as a rerun).
For seventeen mornings I looked at the top half of that blue spruce through the rectangular frame of our upstairs bedroom window. I watched sparrows disappear into its thick-needled protection, saw snowflakes land soundless and still until enough accumulated to soften those needles’ points with frozen fluff. It was good for the soul to wake up to green—evergreen—every day of the year. While we still had a wood burning stove, I’d have to look around and past the silver cylindrical chimney that ran up the side of the house and exactly in the center of the window’s view on its way past the roof, but I didn’t mind. I was warm and could still see the branches move as one in a blizzard.
Five years ago, it started to look thinner and sickly—lower branches lost their needles completely and the nakedness spread upward rather quickly. We knew what was coming. If you’ve ever cut down a tree this size, it’s not something you tackle in between breakfast and lunch, or after a few moments of post-workday decompression. You plan, you prep the tools and equipment, you take time to consider everything that could go wrong, you recruit your team of helpers, and then you suit up: long sleeves and long pants (this is not a job for shorts and the favorite gardening t-shirt), thick gloves, sturdy work boots and a distressed ball cap you purchased while vacationing in the Badlands one hot July. All done thoughtfully and with great respect for the weight of the massive trunk, and a keen eye on the landing place. We moved both trucks to the other side of the chicken coops some 200 yards away.
The old guy came down easily, exhaling its own version of tree relief, and we let it be for the rest of the season that year. Patrick cut most of the trunk that landed to the south of its original standing place into chunky slices and left the pieces for me to repurpose into the current landscaping, but the remaining nine feet of trunk still rests close to the stump, a bit weathered and sporting a most spectacular maroon cap of fungus. We placed an auction-scored wooden bench next to it, facing the west and the mouth of the sprawling meadow. The kittens stretch out full length in the summer and nap there for hours.
It didn’t take long for the mulberry saplings to claim the space at the feet of the Great Fallen, forming a near-perfect and almost reverent circle around the pine’s final resting place. Resembling a more cheerful band of professional mourners, they left the wooden bench alone, not trying to grow up through it or anything, which I considered good form on their part. Mulberries are the rabbits of the arboreal world for their proclivity to reproduce and plant themselves in any open patch of grass or untended field. They’re not the sturdiest of trees over time, and we have several in the wooded part of the meadow that are clearly dead, waiting for the right wind to come along (or at least Patrick and his merciful chainsaw skills). But while they are young and green and loaded with fruit, it’s the best part of early summer to walk beneath them, barefoot (so the overripe drops in the grass can stain the bottoms of your feet a splotchy and glorious purple) and reach up to pluck the darkest and sweetest ones from the branches in front of your face. Our wild birds lay claim to the ones beyond our grasp, and leave us post-mulberry “calling cards” on the deck of the palest and prettiest lavender. A five-gallon bucket and scrub brush take up residence on the porch for the better part of the season.
Yesterday morning, just as the early light of the longest day of the year hoisted itself over the sycamores to the east, the view out the bedroom window was a study in lush green; the topmost branches of those fruited saplings now filled the space where gray-green needles had once lived. Heart-shaped and still a just-unfurled fresh, the leaves could not hide the orange and black of an oriole having his breakfast while I contemplated mine. A familiar prayer filled each chamber in my heart, I get to live here…I get to live here.
Every day, something changes here. Everything that dies makes room for its successor. Last year’s leaves compost the garden and nourish us eventually in the kale we’ve grown and sautéd for dinner. The milkweed in the fields doubles in size and quantity, and the monarchs will find it, I promise. The sheer abundance of life that continues in both the gentlest and harshest of circumstances pauses our steps and our minds so that our hearts can take it all in and hold it close. We dance happily in the tension between the reliability of the seasons and the impermanence of every living thing. Every day, I feel lucky. Every day, I grow in my ability to take fewer and fewer experiences for granted.
For as long as they last, I will enjoy the mulberries.
