Things change

One of my favorite sayings comes from Freud via Mari Ruti: "It is impossible to love life without loving transience." As with most noble sentiments, acknowledgment is easier than bringing action, yet aspiring is half the fun of the struggle.

Sometimes the consequences are largely sentimental. For instance, there is a field about 20 acres in size northwest of us that has for years been used for growing Christmas trees. It's not a very good field for such, evidenced by the gradual decline in the number of trees, even though no harvest has occurred. Earlier this spring, the remaining trees, along with the latest diseased fatalities were cut down, piled and burned. That is, all but one tree, a sizable oak and the only one of its kind in that field.

Word came over the fence that the field had been rented out to another farm of a family whose name is known throughout these part, and the three confirmed bachelors that still live with Mom would be putting in wheat. Gentle souls, these men, hard workers and known to lend a hand to widows and the like who choose to remain on their homesteads. They are well-loved and highly respected. (I may have written about them in the past; I cannot recall.)

I took interest in the field as it stood after the burns. I wondered at length about how they would go about removing the thousands of fir stumps.

Well, as it turned out, the stumps were left and gone over with a contraption behind a large tractor, which, I suppose, more or less mulched them back into the soil. I have no idea how far down into the ground this machine went, and did not stop to examine the work for those brothers were there dawn to dusk. I did not care for them to wonder why the gentleman ex-farmer would find it necessary to examine their work.

Still, I drove by daily to rubberneck, yet I never thought to see if what I had most feared had happened. With this in mind, I made a special trip. Yes, the oak was gone. Or rather, it now laid on its side up by the matriarch land owner's house. By the looks of it, it was unceremoniously dragged intact across a couple hundred yards of field, a quick dispatch so as to not delay the field prep any longer than necessary.

Judging by the amount of stacked firewood both alongside her house and in her garage, the elderly woman heats with wood, so I bear her no grudge. Nor do I the brothers. They farm a couple thousand acres and this tree was understandably insignificant. Still, as it has become clear to you by now, I had taken a liking to that tree.

At one time, most of the land around here was oak savannah, so I saw this tree as defiant in grace. There are still patches of its kin scattered about, enough that those fallen by disease, age or progress have heated my own home for the last eleven years.

In my complicity I am complacent. Still...