Bryan and I are both tree lovers. We don't just hug trees. We say nice things to them, ask advice from them, and let them guide our daily meditations. After all, the Buddha didn't become enlightened until he stuck it out under a bodhi tree for 49 days. And it wasn't from the Shrub or the Cactus of Knowledge that our Judeo Christian God forbade Adam and Eve to eat. Tress are important. Like others, I've always gained a certain peace from trees and hold them in reverence. My childhood is peppered with tree-themed memories... planting them, climbing them, picking pears and peaches from them, hanging upside down in them, falling from them. My parents even let me choose "my tree" when we were clearing the plot of land upon which we would build our ranch. I spent hours on my swing set under "my tree." My beloved cat Murfee was buried underneath it. This year, I was excited to find that Texas vanity plates now offered a delightful "Texas Trees" option alongside the bizarrely popular "Fight Terrorism" and the just plain confusing "Louisiana State Alumni Association."So yeah, you get it. I like trees.
Which is why I'm saddened to have two wonderful trees cut down in our yard. They were old and sick and started dropping large limbs. They were a danger to our house, our fence, our neighbor's house, our neighbor's fence, and not to mention the kids and pets who play near them everyday. Though I insisted initially that this was something Bryan and I could do ourselves, Bryan pointed out that even on my most coordinated of days, climbing to the top of a tree with a chainsaw is just an ER visit waiting to happen. So we could either pay that bill or we could pay a professional several hundred dollars to do the job. We chose door number two. If you've never seen anyone cut down a tall tree, take the opportunity if you get it. It's a fascinating system of levers, pulleys, unlikely acrobatics, and large power tools dangling on wires. There's definitely an art to it, as I suppose there's an art to embalming the dead. And just in a few hours, the lanky, twisted tree that took 70 years to stretch taller than a two story building lays in tidy piles in the backyard. RIP, Sweet Tree. We hardly knew ya'.
