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-title: Trees
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-
-Trees have influenced my life many times over the years. This little
-memoir attempts to organize all my significant tree experiences into one
-place. The motivation for this odd little treatise is that the item
-"Plant a tree" is on my life's bucket list. After pondering about the
-trees I have planted, I decided to expand the topic to other aspects of
-interaction with trees also.
-
-My first memory of a tree experience comes from my earliest childhood
-playground. My family lived in a small white house in Lakeview, Oregon
-in 1958. We lived next to a kind old woman we referred to as Granny
-Green. In her back yard there was an ancient apple tree. It was large
-enough to support the weight of a 5-year-old boy who was learning to be
-like Tarzan of the jungle. I remember spending many lazy summer days in
-that back yard either under the tree or up in it. I hope to see Granny
-Green again someday in Heaven to thank her for those pleasant memories
-and her kindness to me and my siblings.
-
-## Treehouses
-
-Every healthy child must have a tree house embedded in his childhood at
-some point. My first one belongs to the period when my family lived in
-Oregon City in an old farm-house we rented for about a year or so. This
-would have been about 1964 when I was in the 5th grade of elementary
-school. There was a large old cherry tree in the spacious back yard of
-that farmhouse, not too far from a huge barn full of smelly old hay,
-bugs, pigeons and ancient farm equipment. The cherry tree had a few
-large branches that extended nearly parallel to the ground at a height
-of about 12 feet. With a ladder and some sophisticated engineering
-skills, my brother and I managed to place a few planks of wood across
-those branches to form a crude platform. This platform hardly qualified
-as a true treehouse, but it was our first attempt at this kind of
-construction, and we were still learning the skill. It was just large
-enough for two small children to sit on and contemplate the vast world
-below us. The comforts of this treehouse were fairly meager, but
-occasionally we could eat fresh cherries without leaving the living
-room.
-
-My next attempt at building a treehouse was considerably more
-sophisticated. I can't claim all the credit for the engineering marvel
-we created because our friend Dan Kraus filled the role of lead
-construction engineer in this project. I'm guessing I was about 16
-years old by this time because I remember going to a lumber mill with
-"Old Blue", our old blue Chevrolet station wagon that had been in the
-family since the dawn of time. We paid them a dollar for all the lumber
-scraps we could jam into the cargo hold of that station wagon. It was
-perfect for creating the treehouse of our dreams.
-
-Dan Kraus chose a great location for the treehouse. It was located near
-the top of a steep drop-off that descended about 100 feet to the river
-bottoms below. This land was part of the original 60 acres that my
-father bought when I was about 14 years old. He built the family home
-about 1/4 mile away at the top of a hill overlooking the river valley
-below. We found a clump of maple trees that were perfect for our
-treehouse. There were 4 big tree trunks that rose toward the sky roughly
-in the shape of a 4-pointed diamond. Two of the trunks in the middle of
-the diamond were only about 18 inches apart, but the other two trunks at
-the top and bottom of the diamond were about 6 feet apart. The floorplan
-of the treehouse is shown below.
-
-![](md/07_Trees-media/media/image1.png){alt=""}
-
-As you can see from the drawing above, there is a square hole in the
-floor between the two tree trunks that were close together. This hole
-was the door to the treehouse. The only way to get into the treehouse
-was to come up from below the floor and squeeze through the hole in the
-floor. It was not the best arrangement for invited guests and visiting
-dignitaries, but we weren't too worried about those issues when we
-designed the treehouse. Now this was no ordinary treehouse in other ways
-too. The bottom section of the floor (as shown in the drawing above) was
-the living room and it had sides that rose about 6 feet and then it had
-a roof over it. The top section was open to the air because it had no
-sides, just a couple of boards to act as guard rails. This area was the
-veranda. We also put up guard rails on the tree trunks above the living
-room so you could climb up there and be on the lookout for pirates
-coming up the river. We called this upper room the "crow's nest"
-because you could see a large marsh and lots of water-fowl in the river
-bottoms below us. The view was amazing and made us feel like we were the
-kings of a vast kingdom of wild and untamed wilderness below. I wish we
-had taken a picture of this treehouse. It was a source of great pride
-for about one summer. Then other things like girls and cars become more
-important and the treehouse was left to rot in the forest.
-
-## Climbing Trees
-
-I can remember two specific times when I nearly met with disaster when I
-climbed a tree. The first happened at the same home where we built our
-first tree house. There was an old apple tree near the house that had a
-huge limb that extended quite far over the ground 20 feet below. I loved
-to climb out to the end of that limb and bounce up and down. The limb
-would sway up and down about 4 feet. I thought I was like a cowboy
-riding a wild stallion in the air. I was too young and foolish to
-consider that I might be overstressing the structural strength of that
-tree limb. I just knew it was a lot of fun and wanted to impress others
-with my bravery and climbing skills. On one occasion, I was riding the
-wild stallion when my father came out in the yard. I yelled to him to
-watch what I could do in the tree. I threw all my weight into the effort
-to make the show as impressive as possible. Suddenly there was a sharp
-crack as the large tree limb finally gave up and broke under the strain.
-Now all my bravery evaporated, and I screamed like a little girl as the
-broken limb and I fell to the ground below. Fortunately, I didn't break
-any bones, but my pride was considerably bruised as my dad ran over to
-assess the damage. When he found that I wasn't hurt, he just chuckled
-and said, "Well, I guess you learned a valuable lesson about how
-gravity works, Dan."
-
-The second memorable occasion when I climbed a tree illustrates that I
-didn't learn very much from the first memorable tree-climbing incident.
-We lived in a rented house in Vancouver when I was about 10 years old.
-The neighbors across the road had a small pasture for a horse out behind
-their house. Located in the pasture was one of the largest fir trees I
-had ever seen. It rose about 80 feet into the air and was probably over
-100 years old. To me it seemed like the magic bean stalk from the fairy
-tale "Jack and the Bean Stalk". I often wondered what the world would
-look like from the top of that huge old fir tree. I finally worked up
-the courage to attempt the climb and found it to be quite easy. There
-were plenty of limbs to grab ahold of as I ascended to the top. I never
-really felt any great fear as I climbed up that tree. I didn't tell
-anybody about my daring climb because I was fairly certain that my
-parents wouldn't approve. I made it up to the top of that tree where
-the trunk was not very large and decided that was far enough. I had
-proved I could do it and I was ready to come back down. One false move
-and I would certainly have fallen to my death from about 80 feet in the
-air. If you were one of my children or grandchildren watching from
-heaven, you might have had reason for great concern. After all, I was
-not only risking my own life, but all of yours too. You might still be
-stuck in heaven waiting for your next ticket to come to earth because
-your foolish grandpa fell out of that tree and broke his neck. Anyway,
-you are reading this story, so I must have been OK.
-
-## Planting Trees
-
-The first trees I planted are possibly a whole forest of fir trees now,
-but I will likely never know. The first summer after I returned home
-from Brazil, I was hired to plant fir trees on a piece of logged off
-land owned by Jim Granger, a good friend of my father. I'm not sure,
-but I seem to remember that there was a government grant program that
-encouraged people to replant their land with trees after the mature
-lumber trees had been harvested by the logging companies. Accordingly,
-Brother Granger obtained hundreds of young fir seedlings and hired me
-and another college student to plant them. I remember trudging over the
-hills for many hours with a bundle of young trees and a shovel. It was
-back-breaking work, but it was somewhat satisfying to think we were
-contributing to a program that would make the world a more beautiful
-place. Hour after hour I pushed the shovel into the ground, pushed it
-over to the side to create a space in the soil, shoved a seedling into
-the opening, removed the shovel, stomped on the dirt around the young
-tree, then took three steps and repeated the same sequence. I've often
-wondered what ever happened to those trees, but I never had a chance to
-go back there again.
-
-The next trees I planted were in American Fork, Utah. Lori and I had
-purchased a starter home in a small neighborhood next to the railroad
-track and the freeway. After the house was built and the yard was
-planted in grass, I planted two red-leafed ornamental maple trees in the
-front yard along with a northern pecan tree beside the driveway. In the
-back yard I planted a peach tree, a red delicious apple tree and two
-cherry trees. They were all part of an ambitious back yard garden plan
-that included strawberries, raspberries, asparagus and a vegetable plot.
-
-We waited for several years while the fruit trees grew big enough to
-finally start growing fruit. About the third or fourth year later, the
-apple tree burst forth with hundreds of white blossoms after the winter
-finally gave way to spring. Lori and I were so excited to see all those
-blossoms because they meant we would soon enjoy the delight of
-harvesting our first apples from that tree. Alas, it was not to be. A
-few days later, I came home from work to learn that Emily, our oldest
-daughter, had climbed into the tree and picked every last one of those
-blossoms off the tree. I guess she was making "popcorn balls that would
-smell so sweet" or some silly thing, but she managed to totally collect
-every single one of those little white blossoms. Needless to say, she
-got in big trouble for her sinister prank. Her punishment was that she
-had to give me her most precious stuffed animal for the rest of the
-year. I felt that she needed to understand what it felt like to lose
-something that was very important to her. Then she might understand what
-she had taken from me. Perhaps I over-reacted a little, but it seemed to
-make some kind of twisted sense at the time.
-
-## Living with Trees in Maine
-
-My family moved to the state of Maine in 1989. We lived on an acre and a
-half of forest. It was composed of mostly Eastern white pine trees with
-a little bit of oak mixed in. One scruffy giant was directly in front of
-the house beside the driveway into the garage. It was ancient and
-knobby, but interesting to look at. Due to the location of the house, we
-seldom experienced much direct sunlight because of all the trees.
-
-I did plant a spruce tree in the forest there, but only because it was a
-gift and I didn't know what else to do with it. Now, I always enjoy the
-opportunity to plant a tree, but while I lived within such an abundance
-of trees already, I decided it would also be a bit of fun to cut one
-down. Allow me to explain.
-
-After one particularly long and cold winter, we discovered that one of
-the trees in the forest had died. We had a wood burning stove in the
-house, so I decided I would cut down that dead tree and use it for fuel
-in our stove. The technique is fairly simple, but fraught with an
-element of danger. Trees as big as the dead one are large enough to
-cause a great deal of damage if they fall on something like a house.
-Therefore, I studied the problem for quite a while and came up with a
-plan to make the tree fall in just the right direction to avoid any harm
-to myself or the forest. I used my trusty Stihl chain saw to cut a notch
-at the base of the tree on the side where I wanted it to fall. Then I
-made the final cut on the opposite side of the tree and watched with
-apprehension as the old giant slowly started to lean and fall. It
-gathered more and more momentum as it continued to fall, but the
-direction of the fall wasn't precisely what I had tried so hard to
-engineer. There was a young tree about 40 feet tall and 8 inches in
-diameter in the path of the falling giant. The big tree snapped the
-smaller tree just like a little toothpick and hit the ground with a
-whoosh and a big thump. The ground shook from the impact and there were
-a lot of frightening snapping sounds as tree branches splintered and
-flew in the air. I breathed a sigh of relief after the dust settled and
-I could see that no one had been sent to heaven with my little logging
-stunt. I have to admit that the excitement and the suspense of the
-experience got my heart rate up pretty high. I could get used to that
-kind of destructive fun.
-
-Finally, I'll conclude my little epistle about trees with a description
-of the ice storm. Probably somewhere in the vicinity of 1995 we had an
-unusual weather phenomenon where the air was freezing cold at ground
-level, but not at higher altitudes. The moisture in the air condensed
-into rain which froze into solid ice upon reaching the ground. The ice
-formed on everything to a depth of about an inch. It turned everything
-in the forest into a magical crystal garden. This rare spectacle would
-have been quite delightful to experience except for the fact that the
-weight of the ice caused a terrible destruction of the trees in the
-forest. When we woke up on the first morning after the ice storm, the
-view outside looked like a war zone. Many of the trees had fallen over
-due to the tremendous weight of the ice on their branches. One large oak
-tree on the other side of the road in front of our house split right
-down the middle. Fortunately, none of the falling trees caused any
-damage to our house, but I can't say the same for the power lines that
-brought us life-saving electricity in the winter months. Most of the
-power distribution system in the whole state of Maine had been badly
-damaged. The consequence was that we were completely without any
-electricity for a period of 5 days. We managed to keep the house warm by
-burning wood in our stove, but this only kept the family room warm,
-while the rest of the house was like living in a refrigerator. I
-remember that the greatest hardship was not having any light in the
-house in the evening. We had a few candles to make a little bit of
-feeble light, but it was difficult to even read a book in those
-conditions.
-
-The other frightening thing I remember was the noise in the night-time.
-While I was in my bed trying to sleep, I was often awoken by the sound
-of crashing branches in the forest. Many of the branches of the pine
-trees had hundreds of pounds of ice clinging to them. All this weight
-caused a curious thing to happen to the trees. The branches would
-literally be pulled out of the trunk of the trees. Whenever a branch
-finally lost its battle with gravity, there would be a sharp cracking
-sound followed by a thundering crash as the branch and hundreds of
-pounds of ice plummeted to the forest floor. It was difficult to sleep
-under these conditions. All night long the forest echoed with the sound
-of crashing ice avalanches as the trees were decimated by the load of
-ice. I can imagine it might have been like the bombing raids that were
-conducted at night during the world wars.
-
-Finally, after 5 days, the power was restored and life moved on. The
-experience certainly made me appreciate the simple things we had to do
-without when there was no power. I could go on and on. Trees are still a
-big part of my life in the state of Washington. They are a fascinating
-form of life that brings beauty and richness to my mortal experience.