on irrational hopes

for trees I will never sit under

My family.

Who they are.

Who they’ve been.

Where they came from.

Stories of what they did.

These things all inform how I navigate the world.

My granddad cut wood on lands all around me.

My great grandfather was a backwoods hunting guide.

Logs from before his time sit at the bottom of the lake near the beach where we swim.

In the winter the stories of this place echo through the loneliness, bouncing off the cliff face across the lake - where the old rope swing used to be.

Legend has it that my uncle Al put it there in his youthful days.

The tree he hung it from came down during a recent storm. The ankle breaking rite of passage is no longer. That dang tree was outlived by Al - despite the motorcycles and lord knows what else.

I’ve been out murdering trees. I’ve got this great bill-hook machete. It goes through new maple suckers like butter. My dad prefers the trimmer with the saw blade.

It’s not my choice. It needs to get gassed up, checked out and then, ugh, started. That’s too many steps before results. With my machete, it’s good to wear gloves, long pants and DEET to protect from ticks.

But really?

All I need to do is pick up the machete and start swingin’.

Today, I was hacking away. Some trees are eliminated, others are encouraged to thrive. I’m working to create optimal conditions for some trees to grow to the ‘right height’ on the property in order to preserve the view of the lake.

I do this knowing that most of these trees will outlive me.

I hope that they and the land upon which they stand are never sold to a non family member.

I’m sure my dad will question me about the trees that I’ve left and why.

First of all, they’re sugar maples.

My hope?

One day his great grandchildren and my children will feed their grandchildren maple sugar from one of these trees.

That’s an outrageous hope.

I have very little control over the outcome.

And?

I can do something real about it today.

I can choose which trees to remove and which trees to leave. I can help my back forty thrive.

In doing so, I hope to take a place amongst the halls of my ancestors in the lore of the family. I hope that I can leave the place a little better than I found it.

How can you do something real every day that you can see immediate results from but is attached to a distant outrageously impossible hope that though you can’t control the outcome, you might have a real, direct impact?