RECIPROCAL NATURE PROMPT

The Old Pine Tree Still Stands Tall

A special tree in my life

There have been many trees that have been special to me.

There was the weeping willow in the back right corner of my grandmother’s yard. My grandfather planted a whiplike rootless cutting when I was an infant. It quickly grew up beside me and my cousins. Taken down by a strong thunderstorm many decades ago, I still remember where to put each hand and foot to climb higher through my childhood memories. I spent so many hours and years up there.

There’s the silver maple in my side yard. The largest tree on the property and the subject of some of my poems and stories. A presence that always lets me know we’re home.

There are the many other trees I have transplanted or started by seed and watched them mature and give fruit and flowers, shade or ornamental value.

There’s the General Sherman. One of the largest trees in the world. On my pilgrimages to Sequoia National Park, I never miss the opportunity to stand under its two thousand, two hundred year old, shallow rooted magnificence. Thirty eight feet in diameter and two hundred seventy five feet in height, it is the largest tree in in the world by volume.

In New Hampshire we may not have such giants as those western redwoods but the Eastern white pines (pinus strobes) grow up to be an impressive specimen. They live to be over four hundred years old and over one hundred fifty feet in height. Many of the tallest of these trees were once cut down and used for the masts of the many tall ships that once sailed the world’s seas.

When Dr. Preeti Singh and Dr. Fatima Imam asked us to write about a special tree in our lives, this old pine tree, an Eastern White pine, in a nearby woods called out to me.

On a pleasant early December day I walked into the woods to visit my old friend.

With one huge branch remaining on the lower part of the tree the old pine waves hello as I approach it.

Such a cheerful old fellow.

This tree has a real presence standing beside it. It is just far enough in the woods to be away from the road or nearby houses. It is imposing enough to always get my attention. Even more so, now, when most of the surrounding trees have lost their leaves for the winter. I can never walk by without a quick stop and visit.

This deteriorating old pine’s trunk is forty inches in diameter, one hundred nineteen inches in circumference at four and a half feet elevation and about ninety feet in height. It is one of the largest trees in this woodland.

Remains of the old pine’s limbs are scattered on the ground beneath it as they slowly rot and feed the forest life below. Soon these large branches are covered with moss and filled with grubs, ants and beetles, centipeeds and millipedes, field mice and moles tunneling with garter snakes slithering, and fungus colonizing the wet and rotting wood.

Looking up, the tree dosn’t appear to have much green or many growing branches with neeedles left. Even that friendly waving arm looks to have lost its hand of green neeedles. Dozens of branches, some that have thrived for decades, are only stumps of various lengths sticking out of its sappy bark covered trunk. As the surrounding forest rose from abandoned fields those shaded branches slowly died back.

Now only the very top of the tree is green with life.

This pine holds on to the steep hillside and must know its time is almost done. Large falling lower limbs splitting off from the trunk left much softwood exposed to the elements. Carpenter ants tunneling through the wet and rotting trunk are creating a large colony further weakening the old tree.

I recognize its service to the forest. It still has so much left to give. Maybe the old pine is calling out for someone to give it some notice.

Standing proud and strong to the bitter end.

Ignoring the young upstarts who wait patiently for their time in the sun.

Blending into the mixed forest canopy. Only taking what it needs with its great mass of trunk and roots hidden below. Its roots alone must weigh tons. A pine living in balance with those oaks and maples. The chipmunks and squirrels in its branches. Those woodpeckers and their beak pecked nesting holes in the old pine’s abandoned limbs. This pine’s great roots connecting all of this thriving woodland from the living earth below.

It’s time to continue on my day and now the old pine waves goodbye.

Some trees are special. We are allowed to pick a favorite. Some trees may even feel like children. They are happy for us to just leave them be.

Please pick a special tree of your own and write about it. Don’t worry. Trees will keep a secret.

This story was written in response to a Reciprocal collaborative nature prompt by Dr. Preeti Singh and Dr. Fatima Imam, ‘The Special Tree in my Life.’

Anyone who would like to write about a special tree in their life will find more information in this beautiful piece by two of our most special Medium personalities, below…

Please read Hermione Wilds Writes beautiful showing of the love and caring we give and recieve with trees…

and Marta Henriques with her baby lemon tree sapling…

Thank you, always to the editors of Reciprocal, Sahil Patel, Yana Bostongirl, and Dr. Preeti Singh for your care and support.