I miss those woods.

“life”

A bit rainy today, the end of the moto season draws close; it's hardly too cold, but there are wet leaves everywhere now and that's worse than ice in the spring. All in all, the “end of it all” tone of autumn is leaking though my Managed Optimism* and so I stumbled on the above photo and revisited my sadness at the loss of this forest.

These trees have been growing throughout my childhood. In my teen years of visiting my dad's fishing cabin, I never knew this forest existed. It wasn't until my 40's when my dad and his brother in law bought a beat up Ford 9N tractor with a badly maintained brush-cutter that I discovered this forest.

It's funny, as a midwestern boy, I'm longing for actual horizons. I'm surrounded by trees, hills, or buildings and getting to see even 10 miles is a treat. I feel taller. When a ride takes me out into the farm fields where the roads run straight forever, I'm not bored or sad or longing for the twists around the river valleys. Ok, those are fun. But I'm digging the sight of the sky vault.

So why this forest? It was a middle-aged stand of mostly birch trees. In Architecture school, these were the trees used because they're so platonic. Ok, they're not Platonic trees, they're hi-contrast super-easy to draw, nice for foreground and easy to pierce the frame.

Mixed in were a fair number of poplars, which even with my little remaining hearing, make the most wonderful popping sound in a breeze. Along the Rio Grande, near the Tamaya Resort & Spa our family friend Jerry helped the reservation restore the native poplars that were driven out by the salt cedars and Russian olives. Really ingenious trick, they engineered an herbicide dispenser that selectively killed the early sprouts of the invasive species, leaving the slower poplars a clear shot at the sky. (Never thought I'd hear someone call poplars “slow growing.”)

Anyway, fast forward to age 45 and I discovered this forest for real, thanks to S I guess. It was a brief couple of years enjoying it as a place of serenity, especially as my brother got sicker. And so did K (different rates, same fates.) Then, almost at the same time, my dad and the other owners sold a large fraction of the land to the state DNR, who in turn sold logging rights because whatever. Our side decided to tag along, as it would be almost pure profit, the state was bearing the costs of the roads to get in and extract.

The forest is gone. Not just gone, but shredded. The land is impassible with toppled stumps and ruts from the “minimal impact” machines being 4 to 6' deep. It looks like a WWI battlefield minus the organization and order. This is not a complaint against logging, though I think there's pretty damned fine business model for following these hacks around and chipping the leftovers, grading the land, seeding it with something. The sheer violence of their leftovers is staggering.

And now to accompany, my brother's dead; so's K; S and I are long over, cooled, and buried. And I've moved on, happily, to new happy-places with M, and her entirely different view of the world as a dynamic place. She lives in a series of pauses in which she gives all her attention. And she makes me smile, even now when she's at work and I'm feeling blue.

So I find serenity on rivers kayaking, or in making/doing things. Even on a bicycle, though I'm so out-of-shape I think all she can think of is “God, it sounds like he's dying.” (Yeah, a recumbent is easier on my wrists but it doesn't pedal itself.)

And still, there are moments when I miss that forest. Full of skeetos and gnats most of the summer, it's possible to hit an early fall day after the freeze or late spring with a frost at dawn, and it'll be warm and still enough to take off as much as you want and just hang out with the trees for a little while.

*Sounds so much better than “self deception.”