I think I'll never plant another tree

As warned, because of long days at the horse show, my weekend postings will be stories written some time back. This one deals with trees. It's not complete, but I'll post Part I today and Part II tomorrow.

I delight in showing high school kids my prowess in reciting lines from a poem Mrs. Alta Morris made me memorize in the seventh grade literature class at Sandpoint Junior High. On performance day back in the early ‘60s, we had to stand in front of the class, cup hands with elbows resting on our hips, and maintain eye contact with our peers while reciting Joyce Kilmer’s memorable words of adoration to his beloved trees.

So now, in the early ‘00s, as a means of convincing my own students that having to read a poem aloud in front of the class is not nearly so bad as memorizing one, I show off my talent by assuming proper position and sputtering away. Here’s what I remember:

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree,

A tree that stands and looks at God all day

And lifts its leafy arms to pray.

Poems are made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

Now, I know Joyce had a lot more to say several decades ago, but I’m still pretty proud to remember the basic lines of his great verse. I don’t think, however, that I ever fully appreciated its true meaning until I met my husband, Bill, an ultimate tree aficionado. Pocket Girdles readers will remember that the Love romance began at a Boy Scout Jamboree at Idaho’s Farragut State Park back in 1973. I was writing feature stories about the gathering of 30,000 scouts from throughout the United States; he was supervising a group of young men at the Jamboree’s trading post warehouse. When I first met Bill, his harmonica talents turned me on as did his love for the outdoors. We hadn’t exchanged too many of the basic get-to-know-you questions before I learned he was studying at Louisiana’s McNeese State University to become a forester.

“How good are you at identifying the trees around here?” he asked one July afternoon as we sat on the dock at Sandpoint’s city beach gazing off across beautiful Lake Pend Oreille toward the Cabinet Mountains.

“Oh, I’m really good,” I bragged. “I used to work for the Forest Service, and I know Joyce Kilmer’s poem about trees. Do you know it?”

“Yeah,” he answered.

He was surely impressed by my credentials. Prior to our conversation, we had just finished a tennis game, where Bill had learned within seconds that he had not teamed up with Chris Everett Lloyd or Monica Seles. We had hit the courts because of his inquiry about my tennis skills the night before.

“Do you know how to play tennis?” he’d asked on our first-ever meeting.

“Ah, yeah,” I boasted. “I played in college. It was part of my individual sport requirement for P.E.

“Did tennis for nine weeks and bowling for nine weeks,” I added. “I’m better at tennis than I am at bowling.” Just then my ankle reminded me of the time a few years before when I had flung the bowling ball toward the pins and instead of rolling down the lane or sidepassing into the gutter, the giant ball of lead had taken a detour and walloped the inside of my foot with a thrust strong enough to knock me over in the middle of the lane. Picking myself up and wailing in pain, I realized for the first time that bowling was indeed a contact sport.

I told Bill this story and assured him that I could hit a tennis ball much better than I could direct a bowling ball. This was enough of a recommendation for him to ask me if I cared to bat a few balls the next day. Well, we went to the court that Sunday afternoon and waited for about half an hour. In fact, we waited to get on the court longer than we STAYED ON the court. The game finished early. Rather than going into the pathetic details, I’ll defer readers to my books to learn the results of the Brown vs. Love shortest tennis game ever.

Considering circumstances of my tennis braggadocio, I’m sure that when Bill had asked me what I knew about trees, he may have felt a slight tinge of skepticism toward my response. I learned quickly to avoid bragging with this guy about any skills that I thought I’d mastered. On our next date, we traveled to Priest Lake, a relatively unsettled and pristine area northwest of Sandpoint. As the self-proclaimed one-person Chamber of Commerce, I thought it important to show this Louisiana man the choice spots of God’s country. My Forest Service experience had provided me many an opportunity to see the back country, but the three years of work for the F.S. engineers dealt more with cuts, fills, abne levels, and traffic counters than it did with trees. Therefore, my knowledge of the genus and species of every one of Joyce Kilmer’s godly creations had been gained through a lifetime of living around the things rather than textbook memorization.

“What kind of tree is that?” Bill would blurt as we strolled along a lake trail near Luby Bay.

“That’s a pine tree,” I responded without much thought.

We walked another ten feet.

“What kind of tree is that?” once again interrupted an engrossing tale I’d just begun.

“Birch!” I barked, getting on with my story.

We rounded a bend, giving us a peek at the lake. I was about to point out the spectacular Selkirk peaks off to the east when my train of thought was once again derailed.

“What kind of tree is that?”

“It’s an aspen!” My mood was turning to the utter frustration and disgust I’d rather openly displayed on the tennis court as Bill’s balls continued to shoot past my racquet at lightning speeds a few days before.

My newly found love had a good reason for inquiring and wanting to know the make and model of every new tree on the landscape. He was an Eastern trained forester who had seen pine of the loblolly variety, but the his native South was populated with oaks, cypress or sassafras. Hemlocks, larch, ponderosa pine and old growth cedar presented a whole new perspective for this woodsman’s view of the forest. So he was taking advantage of every opportunity to learn how to identify Western species. Although I’d given him some accurate answers, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to do any teaching. It was summertime.

Bill persisted, however, and over the course of his month’s stay in North Idaho, he packed away a lot of knowledge for future use should he ever move west of the Mississippi. And during that time, he didn’t always ask me about trees or slap any more tennis balls past me. Our romance did have a chance to sprout, and that December upon graduating from college, Bill headed to Idaho where he landed a job with the U.S. Forest Service a few weeks later.

The years have passed. Bill has mastered the names of his Western species, and I’ve learned to spot a nice thinning job before he points it out. I’ve also gotten to know more about root rot and bark beetles than I care to recount, and I’ve gained a new appreciation for the difference between tree huggers and tree lovers. In my mind, tree lovers use common sense when it comes to forest practices. They understand that in order for trees to grow well, certain measures can be taken to ensure that growth. They do the grunt work necessary. They work in the trenches as tree farmers, loggers, or foresters and they take a beating publicly from the tree huggers who go to the extremes in their efforts to save every tree ever sprouted.

I’ve often wondered if many of the tree huggers have ever worked in the forest industry or taken the time to work side by side with tree lovers to see first hand the depth of caring and commitment their counterparts have for the forest and its long-term health. My husband works directly with loggers and tree farmers to guide them through wise forest practices and to see that they all follow a uniform policy to protect the future of our forests.

. . . . to be continued