Trees Again

OK, I'm becoming slightly obsessed.

Not so bad as Baron Wormser, who in his book The Road Washes Out in Spring took the cake. He had an excuse, since his house in the middle of nowhere, where he lived for 25 years, had no furnace or electricity but did have three wood stoves, thus eating up innumerable hours (and trees) in felling them, cutting them into chunks, dragging the chunks to his house, cutting them into stove sizes, splitting them, stacking them, drying them, carrying them into the house, burning them. And yet had time for a wondering walk every day among them.

Since we must consume, it's good to have such partners. Adjectives ranging from scrub to magnificent describe them. They are uncursed by locomotion, leaving restlessness to the animal world, breathing in what we breathe out from our exertions. They sacrifice themselves, living to dead, trunk to board, bark to compost, branch to bow, twig to arrow. We over-use them at our peril. At this rate Siberia will soon be a desert just from feeding China.

Our next-door neighbors recently cut down a nice stand of birches near the shore to construct a new septic system. Irrationally (after all, my own house has a leaching field where there were once trees), I want to get out my tape measure and see if it's set back 25 feet from the water as the law requires. They have the perfect right, of course; but was there no other way, and can we use only fallen or hollowed trees for firewood and please, how long before technology can make tables and floors from something else as beautiful as oak?