It was while I was leaving my island get away today that I saw a tree in Maine. It was no different than so many others I have seen on the country roads of Connecticut or the Deciduous Urbania of Boston. It looked as though it could have grown along the shores of the Taunton or in the rocky outposts of Newport, had it been alive, but this one was dead.
And not just dead, but beaten down, chewed to bits and left for moss fodder. It was a tree that could live or die no where else other than the upper regions of New England.
See New England trees get a special life treatment. As saplings they saw pilgrims or natives or settlers of pale skin and monied souls. They witnessed the founding of this nation and the down fall and rebuild then again. They have memories of quaint villages a-topped with white spires attesting to the faith of the wicked. They saw those who had no soul buy there way in to heaven and those with souls in-debt their way to hell. They saw streams turn into industry, industry turn into degradation and degradation turn into cell phone choked highways.
They saw factories, mills and farms grow and die and return as hipster outlets, alpaca outposts and half-assed excuses for the remnants of a once great society left to rot and rust. They saw New England grow, prosper and die and live in the afterlife of history.
But the trees of New England don't rot away the way the old spinsters of the 40's turned to dust in their colonial revivals. There is no dignified exit from this world for trees. The seemstress who fought to feed her family in the great war who now sits painfully unaware that her night gown is half way lifted in the hallway of a heartless medical center in the days before she dies never knows the pain a tree in New England feels as it dies.
For trees the death blow is sudden but the death lasts forever.
You can imagine how this tree stood proud one October looking over the hills out to the sea. Its top standing tall for all nature to enjoy, remembering the days when air was clearer and the vista to the sea less cluttered with cars and roads and lights. How it knew that winter was coming and believing that it could stand tall against the worst nature could deliver. Only to learn that it was wrong.
It may have happened in December or perhaps February, but the ice storm that claimed that tree no doubt caused at least one car to spin and a life to run short. But when that car was pulled to light of day and that soul laid to rest, no one wept for the injured tree.
Its limb, cracked and splintered, gave no clue to the death it would bring to this monument of time. The split, though apparent to the chicadee or falcon, was not to be seen to anyone else other than the microbial who welcomed itself in.
And then the death began.
First the virus seeped in to the veins, up with the watery sap and into the heart of the tree. Once in, it began to grow, but not as quick as a cancer or as sharp as a poison. This death lingered over the seasons, always finding new paths to the eventual outcome while the needles and branches struggled to go on.
Until one day, when the sap flowed no more and the branches one by one turned to sticks. And then the next storm came.
This time, the ice, heavier than before, had little resistance in the weakened boughs and branches. With each hour of rain turned hard, crusting the brittle tentacles another snap was heard and another twig fell to earth until only a trunk was standing.
And it was likely that spring after the winter drying that a stiff wind whipped up before the storm toppling the tall spire that once looked over the world. And the tree was no more a tree, to the unconditioned eye.
But this tree has many years left to give. With the piles of sticks that lay below, it would give foundation to countless nests and shelter to many a fledgling who failed to take immediate flight. It might give warmth to the wayward camper but only so that it would end its time prematurely. Birds use only what they need, people need all that they use.
And if this tree was lucky, no tent would find its shadow and its march to oblivion would go unnoticed by man. And slowly, the virus which found its home so may decades before would change and welcome a new partner. This partner finding favor in the flavor of the left overs of a departing virus would cast its first spores across the decrepit rotting trunk. And when it did those spores would relish the left over cell walls and dried out veins and begin coating the remains of the once great tree with a grey and grassy growth that frosted the decaying remains in new splendor. As if God himself wanted to send this hulk of the ages off with one last parting gift, he decorates and festoons the broken limbs and shattered torso of this once great structure with this moldy growth that glows in the moonlight as if to say, you die now, but your journey was worth the effort.
And so it goes, a tree in New England waits for the eventual dust we all become, but hers without moment or remembrance, she goes on to her reward. And the reward is not to become part of the developed world or a plank in some new home, but this tree of New England goes quietly into grandeur, with each season and storm taking one more piece of it to the earth and to dust until it is gone and forgotten. But such is the life and death of a tree in New England.
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