Heartwood
A flash of light and an explosive crack shake me awake. The power is out. “Did lightning strike our house?” I wonder out loud.
I’m already out of bed, pulling up the window shade when my husband Patrick rouses with a faint laugh. Outside, the night looks calm, windless. Not even a leaf is fluttering but everything is black. I see rays from our neighbors’ flashlights searching our street, so we go outside too.
Wires droop low above my head in our driveway, but I can’t see the problem until I walk down to the sidewalk where dark limbs jut up from the road. My favorite old oak tree has collapsed, for no discernable reason, and is splayed on its side blocking the entire street. I want to go to it, but the downed power lines look too dangerous to cross.
I call 911 and am talking to the dispatcher when I hear a neighbor across the way doing the same thing. A few minutes later a fire truck rolls up with its windows down and a firefighter says, “Can you believe the size of that thing?”
The police arrive, then the electric company. One of them says the tree took out the telephone pole at the foot of our driveway, which includes a transformer. Before power can be restored, they’ll need a new pole, but first the tree needs to go because it’s preventing access. Someone makes a joke about playing basketball at the hoop in our driveway while we wait. Someone else says they may be able to do a temporary bypass to another transformer and get the neighborhood’s power up sooner.
I say, “Yes, let’s do that!” as if my wishes have influence.
Restoring our electricity will take longer because the tree ripped the connection out of our house. We’re no longer hooked up to the grid and need an electrician because the power company doesn’t do that. Good to know. We don’t have one we regularly use, so I lower my expectations about timing.
Patrick looks up the outage on his phone and tells me that it affects 254 houses. Cringe. I’m only slightly assuaged that our situation is the worst. When there seems to be no more news coming, we go inside and I lie awake in bed while the emergency lights twirl outside. I already feel the oak’s loss, remembering how its branches swayed me into rhythm with the world when I laid in the hammock we strung between it and another nearby tree.
In the morning an arborist from the city comes by and we examine the oak together. “Was it windy last night?” she asks. I repeat the story. It wasn’t. No storm. The tree fell on its own.
“Someone was watching over you. Every other time I’ve seen a tree this size fall, it’s done a ton of damage.” She offers this as she peers into the cavern where the roots used to be. “Don’t let anyone near this hole. It probably goes down 20 feet.” Then she turns to the torn trunk and shows us how its middle is dark and wet, rotten.
In the daylight, I’m taking in the miracle of our tree’s plummet. It was one of the only nights when our next-door neighbors didn’t park there. Five minutes before it fell, another neighbor’s daughter had been standing in its path. And somehow, the tree missed every house, taking out only a tiny section of our fence. A clean fall. As if by intention. As if the oak was tending to us. I put my hand on this 150-year old being and feel sad and a bit negligent. Should we have known? Could we have helped the tree? Should we have taken it down sooner?
Patrick’s trying to help with facts, “Leaves don’t get their sustenance from heartwood, only from the exterior rings — the sapwood — which is healthy in the oak that fell. It makes sense that we couldn’t tell it was rotting.”
He spends weeks alone hiking in New Hampshire. When I join him for day trips, he tells me about the trees — white pines, maples, white birch, hemlocks — which he knows by their bark and leaves. Patrick also knows which plants are edible and poisonous. I’m betting his knowledge is different from the arborist’s, whose arena feels more autocratic.
She scrutinizes the ragged stump and the area nearby, “You should take down the tree next to it too. It’s likely compromised.”
Wait, what?! I’m still stuck on the term, “heartwood,” which I never considered before today. It’s usually the strongest part of the tree. I didn’t know trees could die from the inside out; they’re supposed to be the strong ones. They bend, but don’t break. They know how to grow when spring arrives, let go in the fall and hibernate during winter. Trees adjust to reality, thrive anyway.
Later that morning the tree service arrives to remove the fallen oak and their arborist affirms the “cut it down” recommendation. “If this one falls, it will land on your bedroom. The two oaks look like they were originally part of the same tree. When one goes, others nearby tend to die too.”
This arborist is dispassionate, like the one from the town, which troubles me. I’ve read that connected trees across forests don’t compete for resources. They care for those that are weak, shuttling nutrients underground through complex root and fungal systems. How can you build a career with trees and not fall in love with them? Why didn’t I know trees were so interconnected they could die without one another?
I’ve also read that we share somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of our DNA with trees and I begin thinking of the remaining oak as the sister tree. I want this second arborist to drill into her to see if she’s rotten. Apparently that’s not done.
I’m trying to believe these experts, but in “The Overstory,” Richard Powers’ novel about the history of trees, he wrote that just as an old Douglas fir dies, it bequeaths its store of nutrients to its neighbors in a last act of grace and charity. What if oaks do this too? What if the sister tree is meant to survive?
I don’t understand my grief, so I lash out, “Arborists are like surgeons. It’s their job to cut things, so of course this is their recommendation!”
Patrick agrees with me, except he’s rational, “Yes hon, but this second tree is leaning, and now it doesn’t have the weight from the first one to keep its roots secure. Every time we get a storm I’m going to worry. It’s so big it would be like a semi-truck crashing where you and I sleep. The mayor, in her last newsletter, wrote that lots of these big trees are coming down because of the drought. The soil is too dry to hold them.”
It helps that he loves trees as much, probably more, than I do. Because I’m taking private glances at the sister tree whenever I pass a window. I look up through her branches and notice how the sunlight twinkles in between her leaves. She’s out there, lonely, next to the dead stump and my heart lurches toward her. I always thought that we were in her care. Now, she is in ours.
For a week, we deal with logistics. We get quotes for the sister tree removal and something called stump grinding, which sounds sadistic. On Sunday, we escape to the East Bay Bike Path in Providence, Rhode Island. We ride the Crescent Park Carousel, and listen to a folk music festival across the street. All the while I’m noticing the trees, estimating their age by the radius of their trunks — they’re all much younger than our oaks.
On the ride back, our youngest, Clara, is weaving in between the dotted lines on the bike path and loses control, crashing. I’m too close behind and my front tire rides up on Clara’s leg before I can stop. Patrick rushes off to get his truck while our older daughter, Izzy, and I coax Clara to a parking lot where we can wait. Clara’s leg is bleeding and they can’t put much weight on it. Their helmet is dented. In the truck, I’m trying to keep Clara awake, and periodically ask questions like, “What day is it?” and “Is it summer or fall?” By the time we get home I’ve stopped worrying about a serious concussion, but Clara is banged up.
I’ve forgotten about the trees until my phone rings. I don’t know the number so I press “ignore” but get a text a few seconds later. “Hi Beth…You spoke with my husband after your tree fell. Your VM says you’re easier to reach via text. Could you please call me?”
I respond with levity, “Haha. I get so many spam calls I never answer my phone. I’ll give you a ring.”
This neighbor owns one of the houses across the street that has a steady rotation of renters. We’ve never met. She answers with, “That tree was on your property. It took out a city tree in front of our house that provided a lot of shade. It also damaged a willow tree in our yard, and my husband spent the entire day outside cleaning up. And no one came over to help him!” She wants us to cover the costs.
I’m so exhausted that I can’t find my reflexive guilt. Once I apologized to a client because he forgot to attach a document to his email. But not today. I summon calm and I tell her that in Massachusetts when a tree falls on your property, your insurance covers it, not the person who owns the tree. I’d been surprised by this information, and tell her so. “Can I ask that you call your insurance company and see what they say?”
This doesn’t help, so I also mention that we weren’t at the house today and just got back from dealing with a fairly serious bike accident. She softens. She asks if Clara is okay. I soften. I tell her she doesn’t know me yet, but I will do right by her. I say it’s our intention to be good neighbors and agree to connect in the next few days after we have more information.
When I hang up Izzy says, “Mommy, you were using your regal voice.”
“That’s my client voice.” I use it to veneer my anger.
Overnight, in my head, I write drafts of a message to her trying to prove that I’m not a bad person. Then I think about the community of trees. They are wiser and kinder than humans, because we get angry and forget that we’re connected, that how we care for one another has ripples. I remind myself that anger happens when we feel less than. My neighbor must feel unconsidered — uncared for — her roots separate from mine.
In the morning, I add up what she might have spent, a few hundred bucks — an easy peace offering. I send her a text.
Her response comes an hour later, turning down the money, “We love trees…Not only did you lose a tree, but we did too…It’s kind of you to offer the money…Our sadness and frustration is palpable.”
She’ll accept my offer to have our landscapers fix up her grass though, and then we begin texting about trees. I tell her about the root system, the community. And then, “I so share your love of trees…We’re going to have a ceremony for the tree that fell and the other one we have to take down, because they deserve to be honored. I think trees teach us how to live and survive.”
“Perhaps we plant new ones!” she writes back. “Yes. We will need to do that. We will all carry on from here and look for renewal.” A week later we had her lawn reseeded and she sent me a photo of new grass coming up, “…rebirth.”
My neighbor and I are working on letting go. In the “Overstory,” Powers wrote that, “Memory is always a collaboration in progress.” Maybe she, like I, thought the trees were immortal. Or at least that they’d outlast us. Those oaks felt like something to rely on and to trust in, models for enduring in a chaotic world. Until one fell randomly in the middle of the night because climate change is causing a drought and something rotted its heart.
On the eve of the sister oak removal, Patrick, Izzy, and I go outside to say goodbye. Patrick puts his hand on the tree and steps back to take her in. I see tears rise in his eyes. Izzy throws her arms around her, “It’s not fair,” she says. “It’s a living thing!” She stomps inside, generally pissed at no one and everyone.
I wrap my arms around the sister tree too and whisper, “Thank you, old friend. I’m so sorry.”
Patrick says it’s like putting down a dying dog that’s suffering, “The right thing to do, but so hard.”
The next morning the tree service arrives at 7 a.m.. I’ve been up for two hours anticipating this. When I move my car to free up our driveway I can’t look at the sister tree. I try one last plea to Patrick, “The tree doesn’t deserve to die just because it’s growing next to our house.” He shrugs and just looks at me, because what is there to say or do?
Outside, I engage the lead guy in this discussion. He looks at her closely, and says she does need to go. He notes concern about a third nearby, a Norway maple, but then says, “Actually, I think this one is okay. Do you see there on the side? That’s wound wood from a previous crack and it looks healed.” This helps me trust his certainty about the sister tree’s fate. I tell him we want two slices from her trunk.
“Oh nice! You want tables! How thick?” he wants to know. “8 inches, 6 inches? 4?” I choose 4 inches because I have no idea and I’m sad and I can’t think about the standard thickness of tables right now. I want to honor our sister oak, but displaying her also feels like killing an animal and mounting its head on the wall.
Through our kitchen window I see an arm from the truck reach across our yard with the first branch. I have my handbag on my shoulder and as I turn toward the door, Patrick asks, “Do you want to stay home and watch?”
“I can’t handle it.” I pause for a minute, looking out at the trucks. “I hope the tree is rotten — then I’ll feel a little better.”
As I walk down our street, I see the lead guy at the top of the sister tree, lobbing off pieces with a chainsaw. He whoops every so often, as though he’s on a roller coaster. Tears slip down my cheeks while I wonder if I’ve mistaken his confidence for arrogance. Is he doing this work because he needs to live close to the edge to feel alive?
Near the end of the day Patrick texts me, “They couldn’t get slices from the trunk. It was rotten. When they stuck a pole down inside, it slipped 10 feet.” At least it was the tree’s time, but I don’t want to go home.
By the next morning a cold front has moved through, clearing and chilling the air. Izzy is worried about what the squirrels will do without the acorns. She’s the kid who shakes heavy snow from fledgling pines so their bows don’t break, then coos, “You’re okay.” Clara, though, looks out the window and says, “Wow the sky looks so clear now.” We have an uninterrupted view, and I have to admit that the stars looked brighter last night.
Later in the morning, Patrick texts me a photo of a dawn redwood, his choice for replacing our oaks. They shed their needles in the fall, but first, they turn a pretty burnt orange. He tells me that they were thought to be extinct until the 1940s when they were rediscovered in China.
A few Saturdays later, we go to the Mount Auburn Cemetery where the oldest trees in Massachusetts grow. I find one that looks twice the circumference of our oaks and hug it. Patrick identifies it as a European beech and I want this one in our yard. Izzy says when I die she’ll spread my ashes near an old tree in a field of flowers. Near the end of our walk, we find what we came to see: a dawn redwood. Patrick estimates it is 20 years old.
Izzy thinks it has interesting branches.
I ask, “Will it get too big for our yard?”
Patrick says, “Don’t worry. Those oaks were massive. Dawn redwoods grow a few feet a year. It will be a hundred years before it comes close.”
I’m not really concerned about its size; I’m having trouble warming to something new. It feels like getting a new pet after yours dies. I want something towering, stable and wise, because I miss the oaks and want them back exactly as they were.
Dawn redwoods have slanted branches, ferned needles and acorn-sized pinecones. They’re also known as fossil trees because they’ve survived, virtually unchanged, since the dinosaurs. When the dawn redwoods were rediscovered, the villagers said that gods lived among them, in part because of their rich contributions to the region’s ecosystem[1]. Patrick placed an order for ours, whose scientific name is Metasequoia. I’m looking at photos of them online, trying to get acquainted. We are beginning again, which is also a letting go. It’s an act of faith that new roots will take hold, intertwine with others and know how to ferry us forward.
[1] Kyna Rubin, “The Metasequoia Mystery,” Landscape Architecture Magazine, (January 19, 2016), https://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2016/01/19/the-metasequoia-mystery/
