Wenting Li
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Last September was hard on our trees. Our area had a powerful windstorm early in the month followed by an early snow, while trees were still in full leaf – a foot and a half of heavy, wet snow. When it was clear, I went out to see how the damage affected our ongoing conversation.
The hurt was profound. The snow’s sloppy pollarding left many of our trees in a sorry state. Limbs of every size lay on a thatch of windthrow.
Trees are ambitious and early planners. Our apple tree, for example, had planned its spring blossoms before the last fall leaves had left. Next year’s growth, budgeted, assigned and distributed. But snow and wind injured its ambitions.
One cottonwood reveals a broken lateral branch, exposing a dark brown circle of heartwood staring like a sad, unblinking eye. Clear sap falls from the wound like tears. The rest of our yard is in ruins. The other cottonwoods. The apple tree. The maple.
Trees are like people, I think. They don’t see themselves clearly. So I come along to help them recover their best selves. I decide to work from the youngest tree to the oldest, from the easiest conversations to most difficult. So I start with the apple tree, a child, in tree terms.
The apple tree looks like a bush. A bunch of young suckers, epicormic sprouts, spike out around the trunk. The apple tree’s downfall is that its young shoots are tasty. Our local moose population occasionally stops by for an apple-tree snack. These days it’s a mom and her two calves. Although this isn’t a storm-related problem, it’s part of our talk.
When a tree sends up epicormic shoots around the trunk, it’s panicking. Its plans were confounded, and it’s been hurt. It’s partly defence, like a person covering his head to protect themselves from an assault. Partly frustration and desperation.
I’ve been there myself. Yesterday was the kind of day where every good plan I’d had seemed to break. I did much the same thing as this tree did.
The snow stripped a few smaller laterals from the upper branches. The damage is minor, but it’s likely to encourage more defensive behaviour. The tree has lots of ideas for what it might do and where it wants to go. Like many young lives, it has trouble focusing. I know this state, too. Stubs of thought stick out all over the place. So we talk.
“Don’t worry about moose,” I tell it. “Stop being defensive.” I sort through the rest of its plans. There are duplicates. “This is a better idea. It’s stronger,” I say. “This idea’s redundant.” A branch sticks out low, over the ground. “Not a good direction,” I say with my shears and saw. “Here’s how to spend your time and energy wisely,” I counsel.
One has to be careful: This advice has a lifelong impact on its character. One small twig, this year, is a branch the next, and part of the trunk in a few years. I point to the neighbour’s towering cottonwoods. “I don’t want you to grow up like that,” I say. I step back and consider my work.
The Manitoba Maple is a teenager. It lives in a perpetual mess. I’m not sure I want it around. Between this year’s frenetic growth, the wind and the snow, it’s looking like a Trump combover in a hurricane. Once I sort through the growth and damage, I discover it’s better off than it seemed.
“Relax,” I tell this tree. “Focus.” My biggest advice to it today: “grow up.” I made my best case and we’ll see what it chooses to do over the next year.
The poplars are young adults. They took the storm hard. In their reach toward adulthood, they’d shot toward the sky. But the snow smashed their young, thin crowns.
I repair the damage and get rid of a few low-lying branches. They are misshapen. Unbalanced. Unlike the younger trees, their damage is something they’ll have to live with now. Their wounds remind me of one or two of my own. Although most of this tree’s upper laterals were broken, the lower ones survived. One now looks like a fist with a finger extended.
The big breaks, in every case, are at the trunk. So, I nurse and console. I trim broken branches, still held by bark to the trunk. I shape some of the wounds with my saw and shears.
But the wounds, although painful, are not fatal. “These are your big disappointments,” I say. “You’ll recover,” I tell them. “You’ll get through this.” Fortunately, these young poplars, at the root, are optimists.
But optimism can sour with age. Our neighbour’s old cottonwoods are cankered and scarred. They loom 18 to 24 metres above our roofline and lord over our driveway. Every branch a threat. Pocked with rot. Split trunks. Punky sores leer over the fence. The conversation these trees needed never happened. Snow was cruel to them, and the damage adds to their menace.
To these trees, I cannot speak. They needed a friend a long time ago, but didn’t find one. It’s a lack of conversation, amplified by time, aggravated by disease. They wave a warning to me.
The pieces of conversation lay heaped in the yard. Here’s the best advice I can give these trees: Simplify. Focus. Grow up. Heal. These are the same words the trees offer to me. I clean the mess and hope for growth and healing. For them, for me.
Bill Bunn lives in Millarville, Alta.