Why Don’t You Make Like A Tree And Get Outta Here?

Why Don’t You Make Like A Tree And Get Outta Here?

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

By Joyce Kilmer

We had to euthanize a tree in our backyard the other day. And by euthanize I mean cut it all up with a chainsaw. We had some tree guys come over and do the job. As I stood back and watched them slice up the tree I felt something wet on my cheek. What the heck is this? I’m crying over a tree? I didn’t expect to get so emotional. I’m not a tree hugger but I found myself wishing I had given this tree a hug before it went down.

We’ve lived in this house for 12 years and that tree was here long before us. There’s no telling how many things that tree has seen (metephorically, I know trees don’t have eyes.) I’m sure it’s been here through multiple families that have grown up around it’s trunk and roots. Also, up in it’s limbs because it used to have a tree house in it until one cataclysmic storm converted it into a ground house that we had to condemn. Unfortunately, it contracted some kind of disease that started eating it from the inside out. We tried a lot of remedies to reverse the disease. We even had a tree surgeon look at it. But like a lot of disappointing doctors in my life lately, he failed to cure it. Over the last few years we lost several large sections of the tree until we couldn’t risk having it stand anymore for fear the rest of it would come down on the house.

I used to bitch about the leaves this tree made me rake up but now I’m bitching about the lack of shade for the back deck. I’d take back all the bitching and rake twice the number of leaves if I could have that tree back, but it’s gone now. So, I will do a celebration of life for the tree with a look back on a few pictures featuring our old oak of a buddy.

The tree on the day we moved in.

First time we lost a limb. Missed the corner of the house by a foot.

Second time took down the tree house.

Finally had to take it all the way down. Sawyer and Finn are wondering if they’ll ever get to chase squirrels again.

I tried to count the rings but kept losing the count. Can you help me?

My wife took a piece of the tree and painted on a white blaze for my love of the Appalachian Trail. It looks great on the mantle!

I’ll miss you tree!

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19 thoughts on “Why Don’t You Make Like A Tree And Get Outta Here?

  1. Several years ago the ‘government’ of Florida was scared about Citrus Canker, so all citrus trees had to go – healthy or not. We had 3 and I cried because they were perfect and far, far away from any infected trees. The ‘disease’ only made the fruit dirty looking – it didn’t effect the fruit itself. We moved away before everybody sued and although we never received any monetary compensation, I felt like I had lost a couple of friends (even the grapefruit which I hate).

    1. Ha! Guess he wasn’t comforted by those encouraging words. I’m planning on planting another oak tree sapling there. I might be able to put a fairy tree house in it before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

  2. So sad!
    I love all trees, but have especially fond memories of a maple in front of first house I lived in. Great climbing tree. Great leaves to rake, pile and jump into every autumn.
    I hope the tree you plant in its stead grows fast and big so Finn and Sawyer soon have squirrels to chase again.

    1. When I was a kid I was a climber and spent many an hour in trees. One even betrayed me by detaching one of it’s branches I was climbing on to send me 20 feet to the ground and a trip to the hospital for a broken arm. However, as soon as the cast came off I was right back up that tree. I held no ill will, after all, I was the intruder in it’s branches.

  3. That really was a great tree. I could imagine getting some really good writing done while sitting up there in that tree house, if it was still usable when you moved in. Even if it wasn’t I can’t get over how much imagination and wonder that tree represented, and Sawyer and Finn seem to feel the same way. The fact that you’ve saved a piece of it is a fitting metaphor for all it represented, or maybe a synecdoche.
    Nothing against Joyce Kilmer but what I thought of was a prose poem by Alexander Solzhenitsyn called “The Elm Log”.
    I hope you don’t mind me quoting it in its entirety.

    “We were sawing firewood when we picked up an elm log and gave a cry of amazement. It was a full year since we had chopped down the trunk, dragged it along behind a tractor and sawn it up into logs, which we had then thrown on to barges and wagons, rolled into stacks and piled up on the ground – and yet this elm log had still not given up! A fresh green shoot had sprouted from it with a promise of a thick, leafy branch, or even a whole new elm tree.
    We placed the log on the sawing-horse, as though on an executioner’s block, but we could not bring ourselves to bite into it with our saw. How could we? That log cherished life as dearly as we did; indeed, its urge to live was even stronger than ours.”
    Christopher recently posted…Putting My Foot In It.My Profile

    1. I don’t mind at all. The prose if very fitting as this tree started dying over the years it still held on by sprouting leaves each spring on the sections it still could. It took this long to cut it down because I always said, “But there are still leaves!”

      The tree house was still usable when I moved in but I mostly used it as a doghouse to go drink in when my wife was upset with me.

  4. That is sad to lose a tree. The big tree in front of our house has some kind of disease too. Every year I try to trim the problem parts but they keep coming back. Hopefully this year my efforts will be more successful!

  5. We had to take down a cherry tree once and I felt the same way. The blossoms were maddening, the squirrels would eat part of the cherry then let it fall like shrapnel on our deck, then the leaves would fall and I’d be angry again. But when the Carpenter ants made it impossible for the tree to survive (despite valiant attempts by arborists and google tree Drs.) it had to come down before it fell down. I cried. Not a trickle, but a real puddle of tears. So, I feel you, and your tree’s, pain. 🙁
    Kristine Laco recently posted…Give Me A ClueMy Profile

    1. You know my pain then. We tried everything to save it and I held out long past the time it was no longer safe. One silver lining is that my wife is doing some nice crafty things with the planks we saved.

  6. Time flies and it takes away some things we really care. Only thing left is a memory. Hope you have a lots of memories. I personally kinda liked your effort of writing about it. You really really wrote pretty well. Ant by writing you can make the memory of your tree fresh. Again the idea of your wife was pretty good. You can make showpiece or furniture by that tree and keep the tree more nearer to you. What you think about that ?
    Kyle Clark recently posted…Best Professional Chainsaw in 2020 – (Reviews & Comparison)My Profile

    1. What do I think? Well at first I thought this was spam. But if it is SPAM it must be from IBM’s Watson because it specifically references items in the post. So I am going with the benefit of the doubt and say you are a real person that somehow was searching for tree cutting since you sell chainsaws and stumbled over this post. So I think I’ll be happy with the comment and thank you for it.

      1. Yeah, you are right I am reviewing products which are good in online. But’s don’t worry about this comment, it’s not a spam. I love to write and share my thoughts.

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