curving back: tree cemetery

Sunday, February 2, 2014

tree cemetery

tree cemetery --

white oaks, black walnuts laid out

in rows, snow shrouded

The felled trees started showing up a couple of weeks ago, just a few, laid side by side among the frozen cow paddies in a pasture by the road. Then more each day, two long rows of limbless trunks, felled in the woods and hauled out by a yellow machine with wheels encased in chains. After last night's snowstorm, the fallen timber lie shrouded in white, like corpses waiting for burial. It makes me sad to witness the demise of so many trees by the hand of man.

From the little public park that was once a Christmas tree farm, I pass the log hauler, parked like a guard at the entrance to the tree cemetery. Walking between the long rows, I count 165 trees, mostly white oak with a few black walnuts.

These logged trees will be sold for lumber, perhaps turned into furniture. Hopefully, the farmer will replant trees rather than turning the forest into yet another field of GMO corn or soybeans to feed cattle. That would be sad indeed. This area was once savannah, a mixture of tall prairie grasses interspersed with white oaks. But when the settlers came, they felled the trees and plowed the land. Now the topsoil, once three feet (one meter) deep, held together by the massive root system of native grasses, has eroded and lost its natural biodiversity and fertility.
Pacing off the trunks, I calculate an average of 30 feet (10 meters) long by 3 feet (1 meter) wide. I squat to count the growth rings on one of the largest oaks; this elder is over 100 years old. Most of the trees are clean to the core, though some show signs of fungal rot, and I find myself assigning names to these aberrant patterns.