North Woods River Runner: Downright Spooky

We awoke to darkness as we had to get our daughter to the high school by 6:15 a.m. She was traveling with her cross country team to cheer on the teammates competing in the State Sectionals. As it slowly grew light outside, it revealed gloom, cold air, and drizzle. It was going to be one of those days. Not a bad day, just one of those days to get some chores done. It started with cleaning up dog poop from the backyard, taking down the fencing around the garden, and then taking out the stakes and wire baskets that marked which vegetables were which; in addition to holding up the cherry tomato plants. As the drizzle increased, I moved inside and cleaned off the dust that had built up on the fans in our bedrooms after a summer of use. I was inside until the drizzle increased to a steady rain that was building up in our eavestroughs. Those of you who own houses near mature trees know what came next. Once in a blue moon you clean the troughs of the leaves when it’s warm and beautiful out. The other forty-eleven times it is closer to what it was today; cold rain, soaked clothes, cold water, wet leaves and a slippery ladder. In the end, the down spouts were cleared and the water released out into the yard. I hooked up the hose to our rain barrel and ran it out to the arbor vitae bushes. They like the extra water. I like to think that when they receive the extra water, the bushes pretend they’re like their white cedar cousins, in some swamp up North, where the waters of some head-water stream are bubbling up out of the ground. It was about then that the flocks of geese flew overhead, bucking the head wind and heading south.

I threw some potatoes and eggs into my iron skillet for brunch, and finished cooking it up just before my son came home for a quick visit from college. We split the meal, ate, and talked.

Some of my cousins texted back and forth about life stuff; funny life stuff, and then I went and picked up my daughter when she and her team came back from the race. I trimmed both of our dogs’ nails and then brushed them out in the garage. Those were the necessary tasks before tackling the vacuuming; otherwise the shed dog hair quickly replaces what you clean up. After a brief run over to school, to get some stuff to help prepare lesson plans, I stopped by and saw a neighbor who was out getting ready for Halloween. He also works at school. We talked about cabins, fish, family, students and birthday presents. Soon kids were walking the neighborhood, so I got home to help pass out candy to “trick-or-treaters.” I’ll admit that it’s fun to see past and present students. For dinner I had a baked pasty, made from a real, live “Yooper” (person from Michigan’s UP - Upper Peninsula) that lives and has a restaurant down here in Roscoe, Illinois.

The pasty was a part of a gift given to me by a student back at the beginning of the school year. It was then that I started the fire in the fireplace. It was perfect for today; a perfect way to end the day.

It was a perfect way to end the day except it was bitter sweet. It was bitter sweet because I was burning some of the last of the green ash tree that used to stand in our backyard next to the house and next to our patio. True, it added to the leaves that built up in our gutters, but even more, it provided shade for a good six months of the year. It was a great tree, that even in the few years we have lived here; I had been trimming into a shapely tree that centered between the house, the patio, and the neighboring spruce tree.

The year we bought the house-Ash Tree next to our home

Enter an invasive species; the emerald ash borer. It was first identified in North America in 2002 but it most likely was here in the early 1990’s; having come over from eastern Asia. The guess is that it came over within the wooden boards used for crates, or the wooden braces used to stabilize the cargo on ships hauling freight. The emerald ash borer is a metallic-green colored insect that during its larvae stage, chews through the live part of the tree between the outer bark and inner cork. After a while the tree has so many holes in it, that it can’t send its life-blood sap up and down through the vascular tubes in its trunk and branches. It’s a sad sight to witness, as the tree fights to live by sending out shoots and runners from areas that are still “alive.” But the fate of the ash tree is inevitable. Its devastation is downright spooky. In addition to the tree that used to stand in our backyard, whole sections of forests in many states are now dead, with only the bare, branched arms left standing and lifted skyward. Streets that were once lined with beautiful, old, American elm trees; trees that formed tunnels alongside houses with front porches in many neighborhoods in towns across America, became barren due to the destruction of Dutch Elm Disease that hit North America in the 1970’s and 80’s. Most cities replaced the elm trees with the green ash tree. Now those same streets are bare again, and it makes you wonder what’s next. It honestly scares me when I think of other species of trees that I enjoy. What will happen to them? It’s like the “Dumbing Down of the World” when things destroy other things in areas where there is no natural checks and balances. Ax handles and tool handles are just some of the items made from the ash tree; by-products of a shapely tree that’s been an important part of North America’s forests and a resource for development.

The ash tree that died in our backyard came down this spring. I wanted it gone before my son’s high school graduation open house. I cut it down and cut up the main trunk and branches. I burned up the smaller branches left behind. The wood up to six inches thick, I stacked for firewood. The ashes from the small branches, I sprinkled into the woods to share its nutrients with other trees and plants. The larger chunks left from its trunk I will split this winter when the air is cold and crisp. Ash is straight grained; it will pop and snap and split under the direction of an ax and wedge and mall.

Cut down & up over one weekend.

Before being cut down.

Cut & Stacked-A fire burns the twigs.

Burning branches put to good use.

We’ve already burned some of the ash this summer, to cook brats and roast marshmallows out in our fire-pit. We’ve burned the ash wood during family fires and fires with friends. Today is the first time I’ve burned its wood in our fireplace. The wood from this tree will last throughout the winter. Burning in our fireplace will be its final tribute, to a worthy life cut tragically short from an unwelcome insect wrecking havoc at a spooky rate across North America. It is, however, literally going down in a blaze of glory.

After a day of chores that allowed me to complete tasks, tonight is an opportunity to sit, relax and reflect. Tonight our old green ash tree is providing me with warmth while I write. It’s time to add another log onto the dying embers to keep the fire alive.

See you along The Way…

“I have been told some people have fireplaces but never start fires in them because they might leave a residue of soot on the firebricks or otherwise smudge the cleanliness of a room. Each to his own, but for me, a fireplace without a fire is like a house without people. Just as it takes warm beating hearts to make a house a home, so it takes flames to make a fireplace.”

-Mel Ellis (Notes from Little Lakes)