The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I do my fair share of tree cutting, I’ll admit to it. The trees I fall seem hopelessly defenseless maybe to the uninitiated newcomer to the woods and forests here on the not quite civilized South End, rooted as they are when the chainsaw revs up and the first cut for the back notch is made. But those fresh immigrants from the cities and suburbs they fled would be wrong, amigo. Trees have been here longer than us, longer than the indigenous Southendomish tribe who feared the spirits behond the safety of their open beaches and shorelines, longer than the fauna that evolved from earlier flora. Their DNA is more complex, their lifespans are far greater and their size makes midgets of the largest of us.

Long after we’ve gone extinct or left or a greener pasture on another planet in another star system, trees will reclaim what we took. They’re here for the long haul and they know how to play the long game. Even though I replant 10 times what I cut down for firewood, they know I’m not their friend. You might think only the alders would count me as a mortal enemy since I only cut them, but the firs and the cedars, the maples and hemlocks, they’ll always side their arboreal kin. I get it.

Last year a maple sheared off and smashed our wellhouse. This was after an old hemlock did the same and crushed my boathouse. An accident? you’re probably thinking. Not me. They could have fallen 330 degrees away from these buildings, but no, they hit them dead on. Bad luck, you’re figuring? Yesterday I came down the trail and toward the wellhouse I’d rebuilt. The same maple dropped another limb the size of a tree aimed right at the new building. At first I thought it had missed by 8 mere inches but after bucking up limbs and trunk, I noticed part of the wellhouse had been whacked hard enough to move it out of plumb, snap the corner post and send siding flying.

If I thought my trees had exacted enough revenge, I was badly mistaken. Evidently there’s no truce and no peace plan. I may have to stop using firewood for heat … but I suspect it’s too late for that.

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