It’s not often in life that you get the chance to open a bodacious view, and that’s probably a good thing, as my tired frame was wracked in the recent carving.
Like flies, poison ivy and Fox News, pine trees are too much with us. Not Christmas trees. They’re beautiful, timeless and worthy of preservation unto the generations. Nor do I condemn pines found in the wild.
It is the domestic pine which so animates me, to the extent that I spent the bulk of my day-after-the-Fourth felling one of the monsters at our family place in Garrett County. Started at 9, and aimed to be done at noon. Somewhere around 3:30 I heaved the last chunk of trunk onto the tailgate.
Sweat-soaked and tattooed in pitch, I popped a Keystone Light, frosty goodness that much sweeter for its swilling o’er the grave of my enemy, a saw-dusted monument I gleefully revisited through a long, happy night of toasting the marriage of my cousin’s daughter, Tori. I had long ago blessed the union, as her husband Ryan introduced me to the explosive potential of Mentos and 2-litre Diet Coke; I knew he'd fit in with the clan just fine.
Like kittens, pine trees are pretty when they’re little. Then they grow up.
Mom planted a half-dozen or so white pines along the property line at our little acre beside Savage River, back when my nephew barely measured a yardstick. I have a picture of Kyle all gnome-like cute in a little pointed hood, standing beside a pine tree only a foot taller. He’s now entering his junior year at Salisbury State, and those cute little pines are nearly 2 feet in diameter at the base.
Planted for privacy, the trees certainly provide it. Only, as there are no prying eyes or porches on the other side, all they shield is the view: wide-open fields sweeping to the west, blending to steep woodland rise that encircles the horizon like stadium walls. Picture the Rose Bowl, times 10.
My best friend Mark, of distant Thurmont days, once paused in the midst of a horseshoe game, looked around and observed from the heart, that God must have carved the valley with an ice-cream scoop.
My middle angel Abzullah just turned 12, going into seventh grade. She was a newborn of a month or so the day Mark fell asleep at the wheel driving home from the River. Drew his last breath at the Clear Spring exit on I-70, on the way to his son’s 6th birthday party.
To stand at the horseshoe pits today, in the shadow of the pines, is to be deprived the view that so inspired Mark. So I take the trees’ continued existence kind of personal.
This point I have argued with my sainted mother for at least the past decade, to no avail. Not only how hideous the trees are in their present state, but how fast they grow.
By some convergence of the stars I can’t recall, I gained license to bring one down a few years ago, and left that grave daunted by the prospect of what lay in store, on that blessed day when Mom came to her senses and let me cut them down, or about three days after she departed this world.
It’s a weird little death pact we share, mother and son. I tell her the pines only live as long as she does. She reminds me there's no guarantee she's going first.
Fortunately, the long-hoped for event came to pass just last week, when Mom finally saw the light. Despite the enormity of the occasion, I don’t remember her exact words, but she verbally opened the window to the trees’ demise, acknowledging in the company of witnesses that the pines were only getting bigger. And uglier.
I knew I’d won her over from the dark side for good, but wasn’t willing to risk delay. Last weekend I hauled out the 20-year-old, dull-chained Husqvarna that had spent the past three years hibernating in the dank, back side of my basement. By some miracle the old girl barked to life after a couple dozen pulls.
Electric lines hung a few feet on the opposite side of the way I wanted the two-trunked behemoth to fall, and it cooperated with the help of a rope strapped to the Tacoma. Six-plus hours to bring it down and cart away the fetid, sticky remains.
Up next is another giant on the end, away from the lines, but bigger at the base. That battle will await the fall.
For I opened a hole in the wall. Sat down and savored God’s country beyond, feet propped on a bench beside the horseshoe pits, in the Valley I call home…