Reflections on the Eighth Week of Summer – Our Giving Tree 

 

Sugar Maple October 2005

Many a Wells Wood evening, hot soapy water splashed my belly while my hands washed dinner plates and my eyes feasted on the towering sugar maple beside the north garden. Thursday, August 8 changed that.

Brum-brum-brrrrrrr.

I gazed through the kitchen window with relief and regret.

Chris Thomas, a logger and owner of Thomas Tree Care, stood in an elevated bucket, stretched his arms, and sliced the bottom branch from the maple trunk.

The maple had extolled seasons ever since Spence’s parents purchased the land in the 1970s. Leaves the size of mouse ears announced spring. Verdant leaves shaded summer. Golden-yellow, orange, or red leaves―whichever a particular year brought―glorified fall. Leafless branches, arching from the gray-brown trunk to the sky, celebrated winter and lifted my dish-washing spirits.

But last year only the bottom third of the towering tree leafed out. This year the maple’s green came from a couple leaf clusters on the lowest branches and Virginia Creeper climbing the trunk. The dying maple needed cut before it fell in a storm―downing the electric line, crushing the angel statue in the garden, blocking West Creek Road, or worse.

Crack. Thunk. The branch Chris cut landed on the angel’s raised bed, but not on the statue. In preparation for the tree service, Spence had scooped the angel into his tractor bucket and drove her to safety inside the garage basement.

The logger looked and acted professional that Thursday. I’d had my doubts after our phone discussion the previous Tuesday.

“My men took pictures of your maple. It has a double trunk.”

I clutched the phone. “It has a single trunk.”

“No. It’s double,” he said in an I-know-trees voice. “It’s right by the driveway.”

Turning to the window, I stared at the dying tree―a gray wood sculpture. “It’s midway between the house and garage driveways.”

Bass voices mumbled in the background. “The men say that’s where GPS took them. The maple’s by two mail boxes. One has the number seventy-four on it.”

“We only have one mail box, and our house number is one hundred six. Your men must have stopped at our neighbor’s house.” I visualized our grouchy neighbor screaming and hobbling outside with his rifle. “He’d be furious if you cut his maple.”

Chris cut the right tree Thursday.

Fetching my camera, I walked outside and stood vigil for the sugar maple. Maple fragrance filled my nostrils and the rumble of truck engines―a bucket truck and a chipper truck―rattled my ear drums.

When the logger pulled his chainsaw into the bucket, three men scrambled under the tree and grabbed branches. Marching single file, the men dragged limbs past the garage driveway to the chipper parked by my father-in-law’s old driveway.

They fed branches into the machine’s square mouth. Crack. Grrrrrrrr. Swoosh. White chips specked with green shot from the back chute in a blurred cascade of squares, oblongs, and triangles. The chips formed a growing pile in the middle of the old driveway.

Back at the maple, Chris cut halfway through a branch near the top of the tree. The branch tilted, and its end rested on the electric wire.

Cutting the Maple

I bit my lip and stepped backward toward the porch. If the branch snapped the line, electric current might . . .

Without finishing the thought, I took another step back.

As if a branch landing on the electric line had been part of his plan, Chris lifted the saw out of the cut and stretched toward a smaller limb on the branch.

I gulped a lungful of air and held it. Would the limb fall onto the electric line too? I closed my eyes.

Buzz. Thud.

Opening one eye a slit, I spied the limb on the ground. The branch still rested on the electric line.

Chris stretched his chainsaw and cut from the bottom of the branch toward his first cut. He left a hinge. With one hand, he pulled the hung-up branch toward himself.

The branch cracked the hinge and thudded onto the ground.

The electric line wobbled.

Chris cleared the rest of the branches and made a request. “Do you have a garden hose? My head gets sweaty in the heat. Then I can’t see.”

He needed to see.

Sucking my stomach in, I scrunched past stacks of wood and the tractor with the reclining angel to fetch the hose.

Sawdust clinging to his sweaty, tanned head, Chris lugged the hose to the north garden.

I pointed to the water hydrant with a connection to the cistern holding rainwater and melted snow that ran off the garage roof.

He squatted and screwed the hose to the hydrant.

While water splashed over his head, I asked, “Do you know why the maple died?”

He turned off the hydrant and shook his wet head sprinkling raindrops. “I don’t. Maybe something from the road.”

Maple Stump

Maples are sensitive to salt. The brine, that our the township used to control dust until the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection outlawed the toxic brew, might have harmed the sugar maple.

Without drying his head, Chris climbed into the bucket, pushed buttons, and rode to the top of the maple.

He revved his chainsaw, brum, brum, brum, and sliced, buzz, buzz, buzz. Then he lowered the chainsaw and pushed the cut section with his hand. Crack. Crash. Section by section Chris cut the trunk until a twelve foot section remained. He climbed out of the bucket, fetched a bigger chainsaw, and lit a cigarette. With it hanging at a risque angle from his lips, he bent and sliced a wedge out of the trunk. The logger, who chopped dangerous wood monsters down to stumps, didn’t worry about igniting sawdust or lung cancer.

After the three hour rumble-brum-buzz, crack-thud-crash symphony, the maple lay in pieces on the ground. The electric line ran across the blue sky, the angel rested safely in the garage, and traffic drove unimpeded along West Creek Road. The men from Thomas Tree Care, as intact as when they’d arrived, drove off. They left a lingering maple fragrance and the country song of crickets and cicadas.

The sugar maple left more.

Sugar maples can live for three or four hundred years. During our maple’s mere seventy-four years―I enlarged the stump photo to count the rings―it gave much pleasure.

It’s still giving.

Firewood. Throughout the past week, Spence’s tractor rumbled and chainsaw buzzed. He cut, hauled, and stacked maple firewood which, when dry, will warm our winters.

Chips. Spence will spread the chips on woods paths to soften our walk and discourage weeds.

Stump. Spence plans to seal it to make a platform for potted plants.

Our maple is a giving tree. And its memories will serve as my beacon for seasons.

Spence Cutting Maple Logs