Hopeful People

I find myself obsessively daydreaming of the Redwoods because I’m in disbelief that I missed the Chestnuts. Once the grand giant of the east, the American Chestnut tree is now functionally extinct, deleted from it’s native range. In a period of roughly 100 years, a species that had lived for thousands, was wiped out. This was recent history. Depending on your age, you can go back one or two generations where it was not only possible, but likely your grandparents and elders enjoyed chestnuts roasting on a open fire straight from the source in their own back yard.

It feels very real to me that it could happen again, at anytime, to any species. Hence the sense of urgency to head west to see the mammoth trees of the northern California coast. 

The Currency of Time

I learned recently that my son carries the mantle of the “poor kid” of his friend group, or so he lightheartedly says. This was slightly validated when overhearing one of his buddies make the statement that going to do stuff with my son is doing “house stuff” (vs. going out to a place for entertainment, like an arcade). It’s not like he’s the only one though, they all hang around at each others houses, but I guess that is all I can really offer on a regular basis. Because it is true that I don’t have the extra funds for exciting trips or excursions or for feeding much more than one hungry nearly teenage boy.

I’m not offended or embarrassed, I’d say we’d both agree that we have everything that we need. I am doing fine, but nothing can change the fact that it is increasingly more expensive to live. Especially here in Litchfield County, Connecticut.  After the mortgage, and the utilities, the car loan, the student loans, the gas, the clothing, the supplies, the food, there isn’t much left. (And I actually go the extra obsessive mile to budget every dollar I spend – every single one is accounted for.)

Single parents get it. Everything is on you, there is no give and take, no sharing of the mental load, the chores, the errands or the income. I may not have much left after payday but I have everything I need, materially speaking. There really isn’t anything I feel like I am missing, in fact I want less. Please get all the things OUT of my space! 

If I am truly missing anything at all, it’s time.

Money can buy you time, like a round trip flight to California, along with a rental car and accommodations for two. Redwoods, check. Sequoias, check. You can be back and forth in a weeks time. 

If you don’t have the money, then you need the time. Time is your currency.

I don’t have the money for those flights, but I do have a car that can take me there, camping gear, an adventurous spirit, and a grocery budget. But I don’t have the time to drive to California, see the Redwoods and Sequoias, and then return on the same road I drove in on.

So for now, no time means no big trees, and it nearly breaks my heart.

Climbing Trees

When I close my eyes to picture a younger version of myself I am always in the woods. I can smell the dirt and decaying leaves and I can hear the crunch of rocks and twigs under my steps, the leaves, like waves, rolling in the breeze. I don’t have many memories of things that I enjoyed as a kid because I often felt separate from the people around me. I would describe it as having two selves. My outer self was the version of me that interacted with the people in my life. Accessing it was like putting on a heavy body suit. I could do it, but it took work because the suit was difficult to put on. There were so many rules: you smile when they smile, you laugh when they laugh, you make eye contact and stand up straight, you must be agreeable and polite, and you must control your behavior. Sometimes, I needed a break.  

Undressing from the outer self meant that I’d risk exposing what remained if I wasn’t discrete about it. This was the real me, the version of myself that felt apart from everyone else. I wouldn’t say I felt lonely, more misunderstood. I’d long to be alone so that I could experience my thoughts freely, to rest and to just be; to exist in a world that was away from all the noise on the outside. I found the best place to unzip and take my respite was up amongst the branches of a tree. 

Up in a tree I felt freedom from the rules of society. I didn’t have to carry the weight of the outer self. I left that on the ground. Up in the branches, I was teleported to a different plane of existence where I was an observer, nothing else. A quiet space to let the thoughts in my mind run freely, no restraint. I had all that I needed, the shade from the leaves, which rustled in the breeze, the bird song, the height, the privacy and peace.

I loved climbing trees. I would observe the trees on my friends and relatives properties to plot out just how I would climb them and trace imaginary routes on how to best travel from one tree to the next. At every house I frequently visited, I had my tree. When I needed a break I would sneak away to climb and become invisible for sometime. When I was six my parents started looking at real estate in different towns and at each showing I’d try to find my way out to the yard to locate any and all good climbing trees, and then test them out. It mattered more to me then any potential bedroom. 

That house on Gallows Hill, where some important revolutionary war general watched a traitor be hanged from the upstairs window and which may actually be haunted, does have some very cool history but did you see these white pines!? I can climb the first one and make my way across all three without touching the ground. Can we move here?

Middle school is hard, any one who has gone through it can vouch for that. There were so many new and minute rules to keep up with, and I couldn’t learn them fast enough. I felt found out, I was simply not cool and a couple weeks into sixth grade I was quickly left behind. 

No, Bonnie Bell lipstick is not the same as Bonnie Bell LipSmackers lip gloss. Do not put on Bonnie Bell lipstick and show it off to peers to prove to them that you too, have Bonnie Bell. It is not the same. They will not be impressed. They will roll their eyes at you and exclude you from the group. You will also look stupid.

I spent a lot of time alone at this age. We didn’t have cable tv or video games in my house until later in high school so I would still frequent outdoor spaces. I confidently knew my way around the local woods and would loose track of time in them. If I wasn’t home early enough in the evening my mom would send our German Shepard out to come collect me.

I did begin to have more of a social life as middle school went on. In my mind, I feel like most of the girls tolerated my strangeness because it allowed them extra time in the vicinity of my brother. But, the toughest of all of them would eventually spend some secret time with me, climbing the trees out in those woods. I wasn’t supposed to talk about our “tree climbers club” because I imagine it was just too dorky, but I appreciated that another person could find the same enjoyment I could in the challenge of climbing a seemingly impossible tree. I had a strong affinity.

The Sentiment

I imagine holding the sentiment that the death of an old tree is more heartbreaking then the death of an animal will have the same affect as when I tell people I can’t stand the sound of babies crying. What a monster! That doesn’t mean I don’t like children or pets, it just means I’ll work extra hard at taking care of them to avoid any unnecessary tears or cries. Mammals and other animals typically can reproduce rather quickly. I cried when I hit a squirrel with my car the other day, but I knew there were many more. It was sad but it wasn’t a tragedy. Old trees on the hand, are precious and rare, and not easily reproduced. I feel the same way about whales.

An old tree is like an elder.It could be a hundred to a few hundred years old. There is even a tree aged nearly 5,000 years. They are witnesses to generations of time passing, alive through all the significant events of our present history and even personal lives, our families past. There is wisdom and magic in an old tree, you can feel it when you stand within their presence. Yet,  they are defenseless in many ways, immobile and at the mercy of their environment and caretakers. Hundreds of years of growth and life taken down within a few minutes work from a chainsaw. They cannot run to safety, or quarantine themselves from the introduction of a deadly pathogen that will wipe out their existence. And this is where my emotions take over. 

I have been having a difficult time finishing this piece. I’ve been asking myself why is it that I feel so much anguish, or why it feels difficult to explain myself in a way that will make me feel understood. Why is this important to me?

I started writing this when I returned from a trip to Shenandoah National Park in April. I had visited the park before but returned a second time to learn more about the human and natural history of the park. Less than 100 years ago, both Dickey Ridge Visitor Center and Big Meadow Lodge were constructed of chestnut, which were abundant in the landscape at the time. For many years I’ve been fascinated by the history of the American Chestnut, but now I was visiting a place where it had historical significance. Not only to the park, but to the Native and Appalachian peoples whom had called that land their home. And now they were all gone. 

During my stay at Big Meadows Campground, I just so happened to be reading the book Leave Only Footprints by Conor Knighton, which had a chapter dedicated to the significant trees of the national parks. It mainly focused on the Red Woods and efforts to protect the groves that remain. With no mention of the American Chestnut I had a fear about the trees being forgotten. Stoic, honorable, and legendary trees and we will never stand in their shade. Could the same be true of the Redwoods and Sequoias?

I feel a sense of urgency to see these trees because if not now, it could be too late. It took one foreign invader less than a century to take down the Chestnuts, could some other blight make quicker work of the even mightier west coast giants? When I returned home from Shenandoah I immediately began the initial research on a trip out to see them and quickly lamented to the time and money restriction. I can’t go. Not now anyway. And it makes me unsettled because I am afraid that in my lifetime or my son’s, that there is a possibility we will miss them. 

The scary truth is that the forests are changing rapidly. In our childhood we could easily step into the understory of our eastern woodlands, but now most forest and river edges are commonly impassible due to the overgrowth of invasive species. Many plants initially introduced for aesthetic purposes are now crowding out our native ones. You see it everywhere you go, and once you are aware of it, you can’t unsee it. Multiflora rose, bitter sweet, and Japanese knotweed are choking out our native ecosystem. The Emerald ash borer and asian longhorn beetles, hemlock woolly adelgid, gypsy moth, and dutch elm disease are here, wiping out our forests as we know them today. Many of our trees are sick and dying. 

Hope

We cannot scream backward into history, yet we do it any way. In afternoons spent ruminating, and in the arguments held in our minds during the days commute. I find myself pleading with the past. Please, please, we don’t need the Japanese Chestnut. Everything here is enough.

So if you can see them, go see them. Not just the big trees but all of them. Take a hike. Appreciate them while they are still here. Protect the land around you. Climb a tree. Maintain hope.

A Tribute to Carl Absher
What kind of person becomes obsessed with American chestnut restoration? Who spends so much time blowing on the embers of loss, hoping against hope to rekindle one little source of warmth and safety on this planet?
Who does that knowing that even in a best-case scenario – if they successfully get the fire going again – they won’t live long enough to enjoy it themselves? Knowing that they are only here to help bridge the gap between their ancestors’ warm, safe past and their children’s warm, safe future?
Hopeful people do this.
Faithful people do this. 
About all else, people who’s love is stronger than their fear, pride, common sense, and even their mortal bodies. 

–The Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation; Winter 2024, Issue 1, Vol 38

-c-

The American Chestnut Foundation: https://tacf.org/

Chestnuts & the Introduction of the Chestnut Blight: https://portal.ct.gov/caes/fact-sheets/plant-pathology/chestnuts-and-the-introduction-of-chestnut-blight

Song Recommendation: Mistakes – Gregory Alan Isakov