Lookin’ Back... At bringing down a big ol’ tree By Lynn Kuhns
Well, I guess I could say that I recently “killed” the largest living thing I ever will during my lifetime. Because the glorious cottonwood tree on the south side of my property had grown so large; because the shape of my lot provides only so much room to build a house and mostly because it was threatening my neighbor’s new cottage and would intimidate the home we’ll soon build, I had to have that tree taken down.
Some hate cottonwoods for the fluff they spew out in spring. Water hogs, they grow fast and high, and pretty much keep anything from growing near them. But cottonwoods welcomed settlers with shade and as signals of water. Cottonwoods on the Great Plains today were living when the huge herds of bison roamed the prairie. Many Native Americans consider the cottonwood tree sacred, “the standing nation.”
No matter which side of the cottonwood debate you shoulder up to, mine was an awesome tree — about four feet in diameter and probably more than 100 feet high. I had called several tree-trimmers to see if they’d take the job. Because of the tree’s intimidating size and location, Randy Schuh was the only one who would. His years of experience, a heck of a bucket truck and a good crew meant he could get the job done safely. He trimmed off the branches and then lowered the larger chunks of limbs with ropes and pulleys so the big wood wouldn’t swing out and whack my neighbor’s cottage.
Then he hinge-cut the massive, eight-ton trunk, and, with block and tackle and tension provided by workers and a truck, had that trunk fall exactly where he wanted it. While Randy had been working, a bald eagle soared high above the cottonwood’s truncated reach. We all stopped to watch a majestic part of Nature’s parade, even on that chilled November day; even as a long-living, far-reaching part of it was being taken down.
While the felling of that giant was an ironic part of my “building process,” I wasn’t ready to see it laying there cut up like a huge Tootsie Roll, rudely ignoble and sweetly majestic at the same time. In spite of the almost celebratory atmosphere that was announced with the wild war-cry of chain saws and the awesome shake-the-world thud of that tree’s fall, I was not ready for it to be gone. The space its trunk once filled is now empty to a southwestern view of Lake Winneconne.
My small cottage sits unsheltered and shrunken in fresh-stripped space. That we’re open to the sky is really noticeable at night, when brighter stars and moonshine reaches unfiltered by a graceful web of high-strung branches. With chunks of limb and trunk stacked on drifts of sawdust, that part of my yard looks more like a war zone than a site for the home of our dreams, but we’re nearer to that, now.
Later, when I was alone, I straddled the tree’s downed trunk, patted it and sighed out some apologetic sorrow — not only to that cottonwood, but to my neighbors who enjoy trees; to my departed parents who built this cottage “in the woods;” to birds that no longer can nest there; and to squirrels that can’t scurry up its trunk.
I had to say something, because there was a tender feeling of loss. No more will cottonwood fluff accent my window screens during that gentle “first-down” of spring. I’ll miss looking up at its strength and form. I’ll miss the heart-shaped, lemon-yellow leaves it shed on the black soil here.
Trees are one of the reasons many of us stay here or move here. They provide shelter, shade, security and fresher air. They give birds, mammals, children and other living creatures places to nest, climb, browse and sing. A perfect blend of function, form and life, trees are praised in the Bible and other sacred books.
They’re inspiration for poetry and songs, and for reflective time. Some here are blessed with room – you don’t need much – for trees to grow in, and places to plant more. They don’t remove or trim back nature’s living gifts from their farmlands, roadsides or sections of their yards.
Others move in to change the shorelines, woodlands and natural blessings of their properties. Some do it out of necessity, while some are driven to transform their homestead-kingdoms with some kind of landscaped territorial mark. I know we’ll plant more trees near where that cottonwood stood, and take care of them so they don’t have to be felled because of neglect or threat.
It may take 15, 30 or 50 years until they inspire others with their beauty, but it will be a start.
Agriculture/Horticulture , Coffee Table Book , Gift Book , House and Home , Nature and Environment

Winter's End? A Year Ago, not Now

Lookin’ Ahead… Lookin’ Back
At Pre-spring Character…
By Lynn Kuhns
That perennial roller-coaster journey from February through March has begun. And we’re all in it together — a soaring and depressing, swirling and lulling, tummy-tumblin’ and nap-inducing head-over-heels thrill of a ride on toward summer.
What’s next, weather wise? Heck, we don’t know. What should I wear today? Wait and see... somewhere between shorts and a snowmobile suit, probably. What’s there to do? Oh, jeez, a lot! And then again, nothin’ much, really.
Alternately we’re sweetly swaddled in, and then harshly startled by contrasts: it’s first sunny and eye-ouch-bright, then solemn and cloud-shielded dark; it’s all warm and inviting, then frigid and life-threatening.
And because we live here and love it, we can take it all…from the menacing frozen tundra sneering at our four-wheel drive, to the mud-swashed gullies preparing to present us with tender pussy willows and spring flowers.
That capricious changeability must do something profound to each of us…to our styles and our souls.
Are we hardened and tempered, or worn down and made weary by it all? Effected by this season’s unpredictable challenges and its generous blessings, we each take a different something from its uneasiness
We know that nothing is certain on any one day in time — not the arrival of spring; not the departure of winter. But the seasons do flow and spring will chase winter and summer will come shining through. Exactly when…well, we just can’t expect to know.
Mostly, we humans like things at least moderately predicable. Who’ll be at the Fin this Friday? Where’ll the fish biting? Will I get a “B” in English this quarter? Will you still love me tomorrow?
But here in the mighty northward reach of the Midwest, we know better than to even think that we’ll know what tomorrow’s weather will be like.
It seems some of us even thrive on not-knowing what’s beyond that cloud bank at the dawn of any March day, or what’s sweeping down from Canada or up from California, or whether the sun will show itself at all. Most of us can take it.
Back on the opening (and only up-river) day of surgeon spearing, Terry, my dog Snowflake and I headed out from our boathouse to take a walk on the lake just off Lasley Shore Drive, where County highway G dips into the lake.
For several days before, hundreds of trucks, vans, cars, snowmobiles and four-wheelers where driving in a procession of motorized hope down our quiet little road and on out onto the lake. Some towed shanties, others drove out to help set up, or just to take a look at the unique tiny-house city that was being erected.
On that clear and windless upriver spearing day, the only clouds were a gentle smoke-grey wisp settled over toward the southwest. Everywhere the rich winter sun glistened on snow-topped ice.
Even so, as hopes of harvesting a sturgeon warmed many an eager soul, I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t part of that parade of patience. We’d been busy with the details of a new house and time got away from us.
I surmised that most of those shanty-toting, ice-sawing, spear-in-hand friends on the lake also had had plenty of stuff to do before the season opened. But they hadn’t let that stop them and I promised myself we wouldn’t have an excuse next time.
I understood then that sturgeon-spearing and anything that’s seasonal and whirling in our annual mercurial churn must be embraced then and there — no matter what else there is to do, no matter what the weather may become.
I was just happy to be out there, enjoying a bright and friendly winter’s day and talking to the spearers we met, who all where happy to share their triumphs and frustrations.
One was a neighbor, who, with his dad, had speared a large female and a male sturgeon that morning. We talked under the winter sun for a good half-hour and later that night, I saw the same guys featured on a television show about sturgeon spearing. Small, wonderful Winneconne world.
That winter’s day —with its come-and-go pageant of vehicles, its super-amped winter sun, and all the sharing and caring people waiting under frosted air warmed with the hope and excitement of doing something that few else in the whole world would ever be able to do — was as fun, feverish and festive as any Fourth of July party.
The next day, though, the sky was the color of decayed liver; the wind furiously hounding the river waves, the air thick with a darker, colder, more desolate and ferocious kind of winter.
The few empty shanties that remained on the ice would be gone, I guessed, by tomorrow.
So it is, where we live. And so we like it… or we don’t.

An old Dog, New Snow and Tears, to Play

I stood alone at the window that gray afternoon and watched my dog, also alone, playing outside. Named Snowflake by my son in Hawaii 13 years ago, she's a mix, a mutt -- a poi dog, they'd say in Hawaii -- and here in Wisconsin, she was crashing through the drifts around our frozen ponds as if in play. Without me.
It was a relatively balmy 33-degree February day and she was flocking through the huge drifts that were often softly, unpredictably giving way in that easy, windless pre-melt. I smiled but then quickly teared up: My dog's advanced dog-age heralds the inevitable. My dread of missing Snowflake-sights like this... and all the buoyed feelings like this crazy joy that she regularly inspires... welled up, hard.
And just then... exactly then, the "Tears" program came on NPR. The broadcast, it turned out, was not about Snowflake's romp, but about Taking the Pain Out of Cooking with Onions. Still, my tears melded back into a smile and until another sweet-sour time like this, the pain was taken out from what our future surely holds.
So I dried my eyes, got my coat on and went out to play in those drifts.

Feb-25-2008, All Things Considered