Life and Death and . . . ...

I hail from* the US state of Nebraska, once known as "The Tree Planter State" and in fact the home of Arbor Day. Lonely sodbusters long ago tried to appease the vast openness of the plains by planting trees to break the monotony. In fact, the state is the home of the nation's (and I think the world's) only hand-planted national forest.

For awhile I lived on the edge of that great prairie and recall one of the county commissioners, an older rancher, pointing to a distant line of trees and saying that when he was a boy, there was none of that and one could see forever.

Likely because of that background, I have a strong attachment to trees and a great aversion to cutting down the same. A friend of mine back home had a very hard time dealing with the fact that the great maple in his front yard, which had shaded his house and attracted his kids for many many years, was dying and was going to come down, either by itself in a succession of falling large branches, or with help in a safe and orderly manner. He wisely chose the latter.

So it was with growing apprehension that I noticed shelf mushrooms growing on the trunk of my own large maple, off-centered in my backyard. Those are a sign of a very sick tree. And I had a couple dead large branches trimmed off, and removed one on my own. Hoping against hope it would somehow, miraculously, recover.

This spring I when I was outside I repeatedly heard a loud, somewhat abrasive, bird call, and finally figured out it was that of a red-bellied woodpecker, which I had seen from time to time visiting the feeder. But this one seemed more permanent. Eventually I discovered a red-feathered head peering out at me from a hole two-thirds of the way up the main branch of the tree. The hole was perfectly round, obviously carved into the wood. Delighted as I was to have a pair of nesting woodpeckers in my yard, despite their harsh calls, I was also saddened, because I know they make their nests in dead wood. So the end is nearing for my tree. I see that many of the branches have leaf buds on them, so I expect it to burst again into green one last glorious time, then I will be faced with that same choice, cut it down or leave it to fall. Logic tells me to choose the former, even though I'd love to watch the tree go through its natural evolution and devolution to mulch and soil. The neighbors and my insurance company would be unhappy indeed to have branches crashing onto their roofs and fences.

Every time I walk through the nearby nature conservancy I see once-majestic trees lying on their sides, in shades of darkening brown, decaying into the very ground that nurtured them, and in the process serving as home to various plants, insects and mammals, all in a well-designed cycle, indifferent to the will of people like me who try so hard to lock things into place, or tidy up things that don't fit into the pattern I prefer.

So, much as I will hate to lose the tree, I am honored to be the temporary guardian of the home of a new batch of baby woodpeckers, and a witness to another stage of natural life.

*I don't really talk like that, using phases like hail from, but it was a good excuse to pretend to do same.