Field Notes—

Felling Trees

By Curtiss Clark

Three men started their work week at our place Monday, arriving early to knock off a small job we had for them. Two diseased and blighted crabapple trees planted too close to the house 30 years ago by a previous owner were coming down. Each tree bore the DayGlo orange mark of the condemned, casually sprayed upon their trunks the week before by the arborist who came to give us a price.

Kate and I had decided that the failing trees had to go for the sake of the garden beds beneath them, for the sake of the utility wires threading through their branches, and for the sake of our backs, which seem to be perpetually bent to the task of cleaning up the blighted leaves beneath them. The flocks of birds that shuttled to and from feeders from the protection of these two trees would soon find out that none of the morning’s activities would be for their sake — they would be simply forsaken.

We had convinced ourselves that getting rid of the trees was the best course, but we weren’t prepared for the swift and skillful violence that did them in. Within one hour, both trees were transformed from the elegant architecture of branch and budding leaf, designed over the years by light, wind, and rain, to two sap-seeping stumps and a pile of chips. Three men with saws and a wood shredder with a monstrous maw undid decades of cell by cell photosynthetic construction in plenty of time for the morning coffee break.

Peeved perching birds spent the rest of the day reprogramming their flight patterns. They would swoop in close, guided by the landscape map in their heads to the point where their eyes contradicted the certitude of their memory, veering finally to the nearest branches in the magnolia out front and the birch out back where we had moved their feeders. Over the course of the day, whole squadrons modified their flight patterns to include the new back-up trees. Every day in the wild, it’s adapt or die. The birds seemed to be adjusting better than Kate and I were.

“We did the right thing, right?” we asked each other repeatedly in turn.

The sunlight beat down unimpeded on the garden beds and filled in the damp shadows on our once-crowded clapboards. A lot of good would come of this. Still, the seeping stumps watered our doubts. Even dying trees are beautiful forms. To have them completely disappear in such an efficient fury of destruction after the exchange a few words with an arborist seems such a disproportionate consequence to a simple gardening and housekeeping decision.

While we dither with our doubts, new tree propagation is in full swing in the newly bird-bulged magnolia and birch. In the breeze, magnolia petals were falling on the stones of the front walk to make way for the seed-studded cones that will follow. And shining goldfinches in the birch were busy tugging at drooping catkins, which when ripe will let loose tiny winged nuts. The birds in both trees will do their part to replenish the neighborhood’s stock of trees by distributing these seeds. They themselves will be long dead before any of the resulting seedlings produce a branch strong enough to provide them with a perch. But the woods and borders are thick with trees planted with the help of their ancestors; they are supported, quite literally, by that legacy.

As for Kate and me, we will do our part. We have already started visiting nurseries in search of a new repositioned replacement tree.

(This and more than 60 other “Field Notes” essays are available at www.field-notebook.com.)