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 befor…