Old Growth

There’s an old growth tree in our yard. It’s a Douglas Fir, massive around  the base and reaching maybe ninety feet above the ground. It was probably too small to be of interest when this area was logged over in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, then large and stately enough to have been spared as an artifact when these houses were built in 1954. 

Over the years, the various owners of this property have added to the tree inventory, planting more than they cut down, so that now our little third acre sports sixteen full-sized trees. But none so grand as the oldest one.

There isn’t a lot of old growth left in this area. The Big Fir that we climbed as kids to prove our manhood is still there and there's a really great example over by the old campus where Microsoft is now. One or two here and there in odd corners. A few along the lake front.  And of course, ours.

Only it’s not really ours, is it? I mean, from the tree’s point of view, we’re just one chapter in the story that’s been unfolding for at least a hundred years and that may well go on for another hundred or more.  It’s seen this area virgin, and then logged over, and painfully re-grown only to be cleared once again to build our houses.

This tree was growing twenty feet from where I’m now sitting when the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk and while my Dad was in the Navy. While I attended Mrs. Beagle’s kindergarten, the tree was right there, providing shade and shelter for birds uncounted. It stood just there while the astronauts took their first orbits and landed on the moon and while we fought an ungodly war in Indochina.

It was there waiting for us when we moved into this house and cleared the weeds from around its base. It stood there while the guy three owners ago built an airplane in the garage and when the owners before us went through their ugly divorce. And it watched over our girls as they grew.

If you’re waiting for some profound wrap-up to this piece, you’ll be waiting awhile. I just enjoy thinking about the life of this tree and what it’s seen in its time.