Seedling

At the water’s edge I rolled my pant legs to my knees. I watched hemlock needles dance in the shadows of an eddy. Four days of rain had swollen the shallow creek that carried twigs and leaves from upstream. As I crossed, my bare shuffled on the smooth shale rock bed. It felt like a sheet of ice.

I smelled summer at the edge of the woods where the brown pine carpet gave way to a thick underbrush. The sun warmed the air that lifted the scent of rich earth decay. The aroma lingered where the forest fought to recover from the scars of logging that had raped the north side of the streambed. In this place the smell was full of mid-season memories, of play of excertions and expeditions to these woods. But it is too early for plump red berries, the sweetness of local corn or warm tomatoes taken directly from the garden’s vine. The smell seemed out of place.

I came to rob the earth again of what it struggled to claim. Last year I found the seedling near the rotted stumps and discarded cider blocks. A tulip tree at the beginning of its journey. Here I could find no mother tree, no sire to claim the sapling as its own. The closest kin was two miles away, a tall straight and solid tree, not common to the area sitting in my parents’ yard.

Taking note that no one else was in the little preserve, I dug a large ring around the tree and a neighboring beech that grew three inches away. Their roots too tangled to separate, I put both in my backpack and carried them to the Jeep. Theft completed.

At the house, I dug a hole, chopping through old roots from the elms that were lost to a bark bettle. Three trees have been removed from the area between the house and old schoolhouse in the last three years. Two were over 70 years old.

I won’t see the tulip get that old, but I hope that someone will find enjoyment in the tree’s journey toward the sky.