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Saying Goodbye to Trees
In the summer, I am an arborist, climbing, pruning, and sometimes removing trees. If pushed, I would have to admit that there are times when the adrenaline rush of a removal is beyond thrilling. I can still remember my removal of my first Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa) in the foothills of the Rockies. It had been hit by the mountain pine beetle, and for mitigation reasons, was scheduled for removal. I am more than aware of the arrogance and speciesism latent in this decision. We value the pine more than the beetle, even though the beetle is an integral part of the life-cycle of forests. Of course, all this is complicated by the question of global-warming, which has perpetuated drier conditions in the Rocky Mountains. Whether the severity of the Rocky's drought is "normal" or a result of global warming caused by humans is a debate all in itself. The pertinent point is the lack of moisture. With the paucity of water, the trees lack the sap to fight the beetle, and more succumb to the death throes of the fungus transmitted by the boring beetles.
Anyhow, back to the story. There were two obstacles, a house and power lines. There was no way to fell the tree from the ground. I therefore spiked up the tree (a practice only applied to removals, NEVER to pruning), de-limbing it on the way. I tied a second line into the top and tossed it to the crew, rappelled down my line, anchored in, pulled my line from the top of the tree, cut my notch--and then, as I began the back-cut, every one of my veins pulsed with palpitating adrenaline. The crew on the ground kept their line taut, and as the top began to fall, I hit the break on the chainsaw, pulled the saw clear, and watched. When observing other climbers from the ground, I had underestimated the impact of the snap. When half of the tree cracked free, the spar vibrated violently back and forth. After everything settled down, I was glad to have all my teeth.
Every time I work on a big removal, the adrenaline is there. The fear is there. Dealing with what we call "big wood" is always dangerous. Most of the deaths in the arboriculture industry are caused by "big wood" falling on the ground crew. Dangerous work can be a rush, but I would hesitate to call it "fun." Removals have always been the worst part of my job. I am beyond a tree hugger. I love them. I take care of them. I can look at trees for hours and never lose intrigue. My vacations are to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest (where there are 19 trees over 4,000 years of age, Pinus longaeva) and to Sequoia National Park, which means I drive nonstop through Yosemite to get there. Sure, Half Dome speaks to something deep in me, but the trees go deeper. When I was at Sequoia National Park, I learned that there was a time when human structures where built close to the trees. (Now all structures have been moved out of most of the groves.) A Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum)threatened one of these human structures, so they cut down the tree to protect the building. The informational sign then read, "We did not realize we were protecting the wrong thing."
In a utopia, I would never cut down a tree, but the cities along the Front Range are not a utopia. None of our trees have the clout that the Giant Sequoia have (which are known to live for 3,000 years)--except one. Outside of Hygiene, CO, the national champion Plains Cottonwood grows (Populus sargentii). That tree is protected. But must a tree be a champion in order for its life to be deemed "valuable"? I am afraid the answer to that question is yes. The reality is that in an urban environment, the buildings, streets, thoroughfares, and people in parks are all protected first and foremost. Even arborists (like myself) who advocate for the trees must acquiesce when human safety is threatened. The trees in an urban setting, at times, must come down. And when they do, we humans must learn how to say goodbye.
Several times this summer, a homeowner was surprised by the news that their tree must be removed. One of these times, the reason was because of a major failure caused by severe weather. Both the husband and the wife took the day off of work, and they kept reappearing during our removal. At different times, both were visibly emotional. They had a Weeping Willow (Salix babylonica), planted when their kids were born, and the tree had grown into their lives. But my frustration is that both of them were too abashed of their emotion. They tried to hide it in furtive glances, and if a tear or two did rise to the surface, they quickly said something like, "Oh, I am being foolish...it is only a tree."
It is only a tree. Really? I don't think so. Identifying with the more-than-human life of the earth--even within an urban context--is a crucial dynamic in what it means to be human. Without nature, we are alienated beings. With nature, we exist within the richness of a host of interrelationships. The reason why I am writing this article is so that the next time any of us has to say goodbye to a tree, we have more confidence. We don't act so sheepish. I wanted to say to that couple, "It is ok to mourn. Say goodbye. A portion of your ecological self has been diminished today. It is not just a tree. It was a presence that helped sustain many of the birds and critters you (hopefully) enjoyed while you drank your morning coffee. Your children swung on the lower branches. It is ok to grieve a bit when a portion of your local ecosystem (how ever impoverished that system is) ceases to exist."
All I said in response, though, was "Hey, it's ok. I understand. Would you like us to wait a minute before proceeding with the removal?"
Perhaps why so many of us are sheepish when saying goodbye to a tree is because of our sense of entitlement. Genesis' dominion is not all to blame, but the ideology that says the earth is a resource specifically for human use makes people callous. It is hard, therefore, to go against the grain of entitlement. To say, I don't think we are entitled to cut down that tree. We are not supposed to care when the Colorado River no longer reaches the Sea of Cortez. After all, God does not care. As long as humans are getting water for their golf courses in Vegas, fuck the environment. If a tree threatens a human structure, fuck the tree. What matters on this earth are human lives.
I do not know why the dominion of Genesis is not trumped by the beatitude, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Meekness is recognizing that when a tree is removed, all the life within the urban ecosystem is diminished--including human life. It is ok to mourn such a loss. And if you are going to argue that a theocentric (Judeo-Christian) perspective is more important than an ecocentric ideology, you had better rethink the weight of the Sermon on the Mount. A sense of entitlement is the root cause for 1) the exploitation of slaves and women; 2) the destructive impulse of colonialism and imperialism which resulted in the bulldozing of native and aboriginal people & their culture; and 3) the blind harvesting of "resources": I need a mast for my warship, so let's cut every White Pine down on the East Coast. Genesis' dominion says, "Go ahead." The beatitude says, "There won't be an earth left to live in."
I have an example of some people who said goodbye to a tree a little more confidently. They were not abashed of their meekness. It wasn't even a removal. All we did was prune off six dead branches at the base of a thornless Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos inermis), which was battling a disease called Thyronectria canker (the canker is caused by a fungus). In order to mitigate the spread of the fungus, the recently dead branches--on which spores are produced--are removed. The pruning became difficult for the homeowners because their daughter, who was now roughly 15, had climbed on those lower branches ever since she could. Part of her psychological make up, her sense of place, her sense of identity, was shaped by swinging on those branches. Her multi-sensory identification with the tree created memories that went deep into her psyche. The smells of the tree, the coarseness of the bark on the skin, the sight of the leaves in autumn, the sound of the empty branches in a winter wind--all of these sensations affected her. Ecopsychologists call such a moment psychosomatic, meaning that the psyche, the soul and the mind, is impacted through the somatic, or bodily, engagement with the environment.
During the removal, both the father and the daughter appeared at separate times, asking for a portion of one of the dead branches as a keepsake. Both were visibly shaken up. I thought they said goodbye to their branches quite well.
My final anecdote involves a mature Plains Cottonwood (Populus sargentii), native to Colorado. The homeowners purchased their home, fifteen years prior, because of the presence of the mature trees. Unfortunately (from a human perspective), Cottonwoods decay easily. At the base, we could see a decay pocket, but we did not know how big it was. After several conferences with the homeowner, it was decided to prune the tree. However, we kept finding large decay pockets in several of the large leads. As we worked, we tried to mitigate the danger. Soon, we exposed the decay pocket at the base of the tree. There was at least an eight foot pocket. (We thrust in one of our pruning poles and could not feel a side.) In any municipal setting, the tree would be immediately removed. Too dangerous. This family, though, had a deep identification with the tree. They also had two children who love to run in the yard. The husband, upon seeing no other alternative, turned away. When he turned back, his upper-right cheek was quivering, "Can you give me a moment?" He had to say goodbye. He also had to go to work, but I think he did what was right. He stuck around for another couple hours, and took several photographs. Sometimes, work can wait.
After the removal of the cottonwood, I worked on the following poem. I know it is a bit taboo for a poet to talk about their work, but I don't consider myself a poet. I see myself as a lover of poetry, a lover of trees, a teacher of both, and a poet on the side. I can understand the poets, and I can teach the poets. Once in awhile, I like to dust off my pen and give it a go.
I dedicate this poem to all of the people out there who have to say goodbye to a tree. I chose the Plains Cottonwood, simply because it has the most wicked structure, it is native to Colorado, and it is the tree I was in the process of removing when I started writing it. By the way, the removal took two days, with three guys bustin' ass. It was a remarkable tree.
I wanted to give a sense of the ponderous nature of this tree, as well as of its maturity. In the beginning, I use the word "hirsute," which is an old word for "hairy" or "shaggy." Yes, it may be redundant to move from "hirsute" to "wooly mammoth" to "shaggy," but I would rather it be called repetition. I wanted to start with the ancient word, and if you have ever climbed a Plains Cottonwood, you would agree that it is intensely shaggy. This "beastification" of the tree hopefully communicates the animation that I feel trees exhibit in all of their motionlessness. I also chose the setting to be in the Plains. This is poetic license. Sure, the tree that prompted the poem was in a two acre backyard, but everything that I say about the tree in the poem is true of that tree.
In the second line, I wanted to make sure to get emphasis on "collapsed." Often, line breaks are not enough to get that pressure on a word. "Collapsed" is the precise word, as it suggests fatigue, age, being worn out--a much better word than "fallen"--so I pushed it far to the right. Hopefully, the reader can pick up on the effect.
In the poem, I integrate big animals where I can. Most of us have an affinity for big mammals, such as the pachyderms. Woolly mammoths, of course, carry with them the sense of something ancient, something extinct, but something wonderfully imaginative. The animals to which I compare the tree hopefully create an aura of respect surrounding the tree.
As the poem progresses, I create images from each season, and I try to break free from the hackneyed expression "the giving tree." It is true that no other organism gives so much through its life and its death than a tree. They support an unthinkable amount of creatures, their leaves bring nutrition to the soil, but I wanted to exhume this concept from the sepulcher of cliché. Sprinkled throughout the poem are many examples of how the tree has impacted the ecosystem within which it lived. Hopefully, the idea that the tree gave is subtle enough. Here is the poem:
Populus sargentii
Hirsute
A woolly mammoth collapsed
Shaggy on the earth
Branches splintered
Some still poised
In the dry sky of the plains
Ridges of bark
Pachydermal furrows
Mountainous in their rising and falling
Around the thirty-foot circumference of your girth
Scarred with faint traces of claws
Raccoons and squirrels scurrying towards home
May you rest well
Your skeleton endured
dry lashings of winter winds
Your three colossal leads awoke
At the rise of sap each spring for a hundred springs
Your thick roots drank
Snowmelt from the gift of summer streams
Your twigs showered
Grasslands with autumn leaves
Your sapwood absorbed
Thunder from the flashes of monsoons
Your twisted architecture spoke
Through its twilight silhouette
Casting moon shadows
Crossing the stillness of night
May your fallen branches still reverberate
With echoes from sonorous
Great horned owls
From the pierces of red-tailed hawks
From the wing beats of blue herons alighting
Within the span of your massive sanctuary
May the earth receive you
And the stories within your rings
As you commence the primordial turning to dust
I can't think of a better way to say goodbye to a tree than through the ritual of creating some sort of art commemorating it. I hope that the father and the daughter who love the Locust somehow incorporated the dead branches into a work of art. Art, like nature, runs deep within the human experience. So, I challenge you. The next time you must say goodbye to a tree, take fifty pictures of it. Create a collage. Write a poem about it. Keep a portion of it and craft it into art. All of these endeavors will help us say goodbye well, and will help cultivate meekness in our approach to how we tread lightly upon the earth.
Of course, there is one gun on the mantel that needs to go off. To all of the faithful readers, thank you for engaging these ideas. To the other contributors, thank you for work. Some of you pulled off some crazy shit. It was always a delight to read your work or look at your photographs each week. To the editors, thank you for spearheading the vision and giving all of us the chance to listen and to voice. To Banality Smith, I bet somewhere deep in your heart that you have a place for grammar. Just need some soul-searching.
These have been good times, good times.
Farewell,
Michael Mulligan
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