Unexpected Roots
It’s 10:47 am on a seriously suburban, sunny, spring Saturday. I have roughly two and a half hours before I need to be at work. Sixty-five degrees out and my car is just sitting in the driveway, begging to be driven. I grab my camera and a sketchbook (how artsy of me) and practically bound out the door.
About two minutes before I left the house (10:55), I decided I’d go for a drive, something too many of us young suburbanites do for fun. Which is fine by me, premium gas prices and all, on a particularly enticing April day like today in the furthest shadows of Chicago.
I end up on the scenic route, through Bull Valley. The daffodils on the side of the road have bloomed, and the buds on the trees whispered in their cocoons as the branches arch above the road, fingers touching. I attempt to take a picture with my phone through the sunroof. Not as easy as it sounds. Also I think it’s illegal.
Eventually my suburban adventure leads me to Veteran’s Acres, a park full of acres dedicated to Veterans. Besides having a playground, basketball and tennis courts, as well as a few baseball fields, Veteran’s Acres also contains seventy-seven protected acres of rolling woods and prairies, shaped by the glaciers thousands of years ago. Through these woods are a few hiking trails, and the McHenry County Prairie Trail (a paved bike path) cuts through a portion of Veteran’s Acres.
On my way to a secluded parking lot on the south side of the park, I pass the main entrance. Packed-fantastic. “It is Saturday,” I sigh to myself, trying not to get upset that other people can enjoy the superb weather and free nature as much as I can.
Relieved and also feeling like I hold a secret to the woods of Veteran’s Acres, I pull into the round, dirt parking lot near the south side of the park. I make the assumption that all trail adventurers like myself today are trustworthy, even as I watch a group of cyclists exit the paved trail on the north end of the lot, cutting through it. But just to be safe I cover up my purse on the passenger seat with my sweater. Drape it here, drape it there, make sure it looks like it’s not covering un-foreseen valuables even though everyone knows it is: check. I grab my long, black parka from the back seat, which I only need for the generous pockets. Sketchbook, pen, car keys, iPhone for emergencies but more importantly Instagram worthy pics: check. Crammed into the pockets they go. Last but not least, I swing the strap of my camera around my neck, locking the doors of my car with the remote in my hand as I walk toward the other trailhead on the left side of the dusty lot.
* * * *
Dinosaurs roamed the earth up until 65 million years ago, their extinction creating the evolution of birds and mammals, the only to survive the unknown catastrophic event powerful enough to kill the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. Here we are today, living on the exact same planet that the dinosaurs lived and died on. When I was younger I used to wonder if my house was built on top of the same earth a triceratops walked on or if those were pterodactyls circling in the summer sky, not hawks. At one point during my childhood, I inherited my next-door neighbor’s dinosaur toys, enabling me to feed these curiosities of prehistoric ponderings. It also enabled me to feed small rocks and Polly Pocket toys to the large, realistic T-Rex that could roar and swallow things (as long as the objects it swallowed could fit and be pulled through the slit in the T-Rex’s stomach).
Secretly, dinosaurs scared me like the concept of space travel and planets and the universe did. They made me feel microscopic and vulnerable, knowing there were far bigger things than my toys, Power Rangers pajamas, and white dog with the brown patch over her left eye. Dinosaurs and space were too much for my brain capacity. I felt overwhelmed by the unknown.
What I should have realized was that I didn’t need to ponder about species that used to walk where I walked, the ones that got wiped out in some ginormous volcanic eruption or massive asteroid pounding. There were older species living in my backyard, next to our shed and the sandbox I spent hours excavating and uncovering fossilized Matchbox cars and sometimes, stray cat poop. There were trees in my backyard, organisms that have been around for 370 million years. Organisms that were born with the Earth, lived with dinosaurs, and have now survived long enough to stand and watch me dig up treasures in the sandbox.
* * * *
Ten steps onto the trail in Veteran’s Acres, I find myself off the trail, well, at least on a narrow foot trail instead. It takes about six steps onto this trail for my bad-ass-suburban-off-the-beaten-track-hiker persona to dissipate as my eyes are drawn from the towering pines to a crumpled granola bar wrapper abandoned on the side of the trail. Someone else has been as brave as me. Could have been there for years, I tell myself, trying to build my hiking mojo back up. I stop a few times along the foot trail to take some pictures, trying to capture the light seeping through the branches of the trees. Later, I’ll probably look at them and remind myself why I’m not a photographer.
After reaching the end of my “secret” foot trail, I stop again; exhausted by the .15 miles I’ve just walked. Not physically exhausted, bad-ass-suburban-off-the-beaten-track-hiker exhausted. I was expecting my escapade to last longer. I’ve come to the edge of the pines I’ve just walked through to a rolling hill full of prairie plants, tall brittle grasses that echo hollowly when they dance in the wind. I take a right, walking on a path bordering the two. Compasses aren’t needed for suburban hikers like me because I know I’ll remember which path I’ve taken and that’s what iPhones with 4G data and Google Maps are for anyway.
I take a left at the next intersecting path, a wide dirt road cutting up and over the rolling prairie. A new cluster of pines stands at the top of the hill in neat rows, looking formal and attentive and stuck-up. I stop at the edge of one of the rows to take a picture when I’m startled by movement on the other end; a runner. Through the gaps between the snooty pine legs I see there are more runners, all in their mid-thirties and older, some shouting, some stopping to walk, but all wearing yellow bib numbers attached to their shirts or thighs. They continue running their race on the trail opposite of the formal pines while I connect their presence to the paved, packed parking lot I passed on the way to my dusty, quiet one. I stay planted at the edge of my row and take a few pictures as the runner’s enter the gap on the other end. I pray the sound of the shutter doesn’t scare them away. They’re the only wildlife I’ll probably see.
* * * *
There was an old ornamental tree in our backyard that died when my youth should have. Death circled its branches in the tree’s last few years; killing every branch it landed on. Eventually my brother deemed it as one of his teenage summer angst projects and decided to cut it down himself on a particularly raging, ordinary, midwestern summer day.
My brother is a mechanic, not a tree logger. The tree then spent its last year looking botched and broken in the backyard, as if a teenager had grown bored mid-sawing and decided to go tinker with his 1994 Saab 9000 Aero instead. No one finished the job until the next summer or so, partly out of laziness and partly out of pity for the tree.
That ornamental tree was pretty gnarly to begin with, its bark looked scrappy and blistered, with pieces falling off in patches and a hole in its trunk large enough for a family of squirrels to live in it that sisters could feed by shoving scraps of bread into their nest. The tree was also prone to dropping its sturdy, dark red cherries beneath its skirting branches during the summer season, which came in handy while playing hunter-gatherer games and for brothers to use in slingshots to shoot sisters in the eye with.
The tree didn’t shade much with its somewhat small fourteen-foot frame and mildly short branches containing measly little simple pinnate shaped leaves. However I personally managed to find some shade between 11:00am and 1:00pm during the peak summer season of mid June-late July, northwest of the tree’s trunk. I’d drag a fold-up camping chair or the hammock into the shadow, dragging and adjusting my position as the sun shifted and settle down with a good book.
Either by choice or by default, I now sit in the ornamental tree-less backyard with my book in the hot Midwestern summer heat, my skin prickling as it burns from lack of shade.
* * * *
After taking some more pictures between the gaps of the stuck-up, prim and proper pines at Veteran’s Acres, I walk through them, twisting about their tall legs like a child in a crowded room full of adults. Again, only a few steps in I notice I’m not the only trailblazer that’s been here. Two previously blazed cigarette butts lay among a bed of brown pine needles, along with a bottle cap. One row over the word MONSTERS is spray painted in white across eight trees, one letter per trunk. I snort; unimpressed by the word choice the previous blazers have left behind, but wish I hadn’t. The snooty trees tiff back at me, as if to scold me for my manners so I continue deeper, winding through their legs once more, wondering what kind of monsters find solace in defacing the organisms attempting to counteract what they’re cigarettes are stealing from their lungs.
A few minutes later (this whole suburban hiking experience isn’t as vastly fulfilling or as lengthy as I wish it would be) I break free of the policing pines and stumble upon a horrific scene. Two solitary stripped pines stand naked towards the center of a clearing, its comrades lay murdered in heaps all around. I start snapping the shutter of my camera, carefully and respectfully edging my way around the crime scene. Evidence is spotted on the west end of the clearing: a Slurpee cup rests on a lone stump next to a pyramid of logs among the crime scene rubble. Man has been here, I think to myself, zooming in to capture the evidence.
* * * *
Nothing quite compares to the holiness of a book, the concept of all books for that matter. The entire education system is built upon books when you think about it. Teachers love books, students (mostly writing majors) love books, children love books, adults like books, doctors, plumbers, and criminals like books. Well, not all people like books but given the fact that we build houses (libraries) for books, I think it’s safe to say a majority of the human population like books; otherwise, I can’t see why our government would endorse the use of libraries.
But what is ironic and I think too often overlooked is that books are made of paper, paper coming from trees. What’s even more ironic is reading a book about trees; trees within a tree. So while we’re encouraged to read books and that we generally recognize a book as a holy, magnificently amazing tool and resource, we are also participating in an act of forestry murder. Trees are being pulped for our knowledge, pulped just to tell us that trees are being pulped for our knowledge.
I don’t think I can ever look at my hardcover collection of Harry Potter books the same ever again, knowing that somewhere along the line, they probably contributed to the 15% of greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation. Harry Potter might have defeated Voldemort, but he also might have accidentally destroyed a portion of the environment. He may have caused the bitterly cold winter temperatures, disrupted the water cycle, caused soil erosion, and Harry may even contribute to the extinction of the Great Panda or the Bengal Tiger. That’s more frightening than a man with no nose, if you ask me.
* * * *
I occasionally feel bad for the pine tree in the far right hand corner of our backyard. It’s abnormally tall among its neighborly peers and is incredibly lanky. But I find solstice in its awkwardness. During my equally as awkward middle school days, I’d look for the tree through Mr. White’s classroom window on the second floor or spot it as I tightened the hair tie on my too big gym shirt, creating a tail while simultaneously making me feel less like a child and more like an attractive teenager. We only lived a block away from Olson Middle School so I could spot the tree without fail, it just standing there in our yard, looming silently and gently while we seventh graders played “soccer” in the field parallel to my backyard. I often felt like waving to the tree, it was an old friend that wouldn’t judge me by who I sat with at lunch or accuse me of liking the same boy.
My father does not see the tree the same as I do, as a familiar friend. He has been talking for years about chopping it down, yet every year, as it grows a little taller, my dad’s plans of cutting it down grows less and less convincing.
Quarterly Scene in the Rhino Household
(Dad, staring out at tree from any house window)- “I really need to top that thing off and chop the rest down. All’s it’s gonna take is a strong wind to uproot it and I can’t have it falling on the shed.” (Shed lies to the left of the tree).
Mom– “Or maybe you should leave it and we can pray that it falls on the kitchen so the house insurance will help pay to remodel it!”
Dad is not amused by this suggestion; I on the other hand, am bemused.
Me– “But what if you’re in the kitchen, Mom, when the tree falls? What then?”
Here is where I picture a hole in the kitchen roof, the tree lying entangled with broken dishware, strewn cabinets, chunks of cabinet and shingles heaped on top of its bent and broken limbs. My mother is trapped underneath the tree, out of sight.
A newspaper article will be run because two deaths occurred, not just one. A picture of me will be included, shoulders hunched as I stand surveying the wreckage. My left hand is placed over my mouth, my right arm hugging my torso as the hand supports my left elbow. Classic shocked pose. After all I’ve just lost two members of the household.
My father will be quoted in the article, noticeably distressed.
“I was going to cut it down this year. I was going to cut it down.”
* * * *
When I’m done taking pictures at the forest crime scene, I make my way back through the prissy pines, feeling a little less harshly about them after witnessing what happened back in that clearing. Back past the stray cigarette butts and MONSTERS. Back onto the large dirt road to the top of the prairie. I stop next to a misplaced hollowed tree trunk lying across a small footpath cutting through the prairie grass that I hadn’t noticed before. As I stand next to the trunk for a moment I listen to the trees talking to each other in loud, hollow voices; watch them sway gently from side to side in the wind, brandishing their branches in conversation.
Apparently trees that have been infected with insects or disease can “talk” to the nearby members of the same species, the non-infected able to produce chemicals to ward off an attack. Unfortunately, I don’t think the pines back in the clearing were warned by their surrounding friends. Or maybe they were. I’m not all that conversed with tree social cultures.
I try to listen to what the pines are saying to each other, while standing up on top of the prairie hill next to the misplaced tree trunk but I can’t understand it. Much like how I still don’t understand the concepts of dinosaurs and space travel. That’s not to say I don’t find them hauntingly beautiful.
* * * *
I’d heard the word ‘Arbor’ in relation to trees before, but I’d never truly known what the connection was. In other words, I knew peanuts about Arbor Day. The Peanuts characters actually knew more than me, with the exception of Sally.
I’ve been fed the basic knowledge of Arbor Day unconsciously for the last couple months at work as a nanny. While the car I drive the three young boys around in projects the speed of the vehicle on the windshield for me, it’s been projecting the fundamentals of Arbor Day via DVD player as well. Then again I’m not surprised that I haven’t been paying attention to the audio stimulation, this car is worth more than my Bachelor’s Degree and there’s three youthful, immaculate souls in the backseats that are undeniably priceless compared to the price of education and American car culture.
It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown has been in and out of rotation of the car’s DVD player the past couple months and the three year old has been quoting “You touched my hand, Chuck! You sly dog,” without being prompted. I’ve heard Sally embarrass herself in two-dimension countless times without it registering.
Insert Peanut’s Adult/Teacher Talking Noise here.
Sally: “Oh, what’s Arbor Day? Oh, that’s simple. That’s the day when all the ships come sailing into the Arbor!”
Classroom erupts with laughter.
Poor Sally. Watching the seven-year old standing in the classroom, her cheeks turning red under those God-awful yellow bangs of hers was an entirely different experience. When it comes to humiliation, the Peanuts have it bad- the heckling is much worse and the laughter is literally spelled out and flashing in front of them, white, fluffy HA HA’s singling Sally out and dancing around her. Not only that but Sally is then assigned an extra assignment by her teacher for her ship slip up: a report on Arbor Day.
I didn’t know what Arbor Day was either but at least I can Google it and watch a children’s cartoon about it.
A caped crusader rescues Sally in her research attempts in the form of Linus and his trusty blue blanket. While Snoopy (loudly) chortles and chuckles over a book about dog obedience training in the library, Linus reads from a book to Sally, “Arbor Day is celebrated on different days in different states throughout the springtime months. The first Arbor Day was April 10th, 1872 in Nebraska.”
Insert comment from Sally about Linus’s dreamy voice and a subsequent “Good grief,” from Linus.
Linus continues, quoting that the “main idea of Arbor Day is that of conservation. Arbor Day points out to both children and adults the need to maintain and protect certain areas of our natural forests and woodlands,” and that “arbor means tree.” Thanks, Linus.
Eventually, the Peanuts get caught up in their usual nutty, unsupervised antics. Sally gives a kick-ass presentation on Arbor Day and somehow everyone discloses from Charlie Brown that there’s no better place to build a lush garden than on his baseball field (insert Charlie Brown scream when said newly renovated field is unveiled to him). Of course, the baseball game commences, even with a tree planted in the pitcher’s mound and a particularly devilish vine threatening Snoopy’s batting performance. In the end, the garden works in Charlie Brown’s favor, the tree and scarecrow (made with two baseball gloves for hands) helping to score a few outs. Charlie Brown’s lack of luck catches up to him however, in the form of a rainstorm that postpones the game. That kid never catches a break.
This year, National Arbor Day is April 25th. I’m tempted to participate by planting a tree, but I’ll avoid any baseball diamonds. Maybe I’ll plant one next to the shadow where my old sandbox sat instead.
* * * *
Later, after my suburban hiking adventure, I realize I want to identify the pine trees I entangled myself with. I’m curious. I pry a large green book with the title Gray’s Manual of Botany stamped in white ink on the binding off the shelf of the local book house library.
At an empty table along the back wall, I find out from Gray’s Manual of Botany that pine trees are a part of the botanical Division II. Spermatophyta, Subdivision I. Gymnospermae, Family 13. Pinaceae class. Due to my lack of knowledge of Latin and also due to the tiny print Gray’s Manual of Botany has and the fact that there are subfamilies of pine trees below the already overwhelming broad classifications and that there are little to no pictures to accompany the tiny print, I move onto the next book about trees, printed on a tree.
The Sibley Guide to Trees barely helps either, telling me there are about 250 species of mostly evergreen trees in eleven genera. 250 species. The next forty or so pages are dedicated to the Pine Family, each species containing images of the cones, needles, and shape of the tree. But even after looking at the pictures I took from my suburban hiking adventure in Veteran’s Acres leaves me frantic. Were the pinecones three inches long, pale yellow-brown and prickly? Or were they two inches long and not prickly? I can remember what the trees smell like and what they sound like but I can’t remember how long the needles were or what the plates of the bark looked like.
I decide to look for the name of the ornamental tree that once stood by the sandbox. I narrow it down to the Rose Family: Plums and Cherries. But were the cherries the tree dropped bird cherries or laurel cherries? Were the leaves narrow, 4 inches wide and oval, or slightly broader? The only way I can physical examine the tree is by memory, and I don’t ever recall measuring the width of its leaves. Even the pine tree that still stands wearily next to the shed is difficult to pinpoint, despite me squinting up at its branches, pulling off needles, and estimating its height.
I begin to feel the mild anxiety usually joined by my thoughts about triceratops and astronaut suits. The anxious feeling that comes when I am suddenly aware that there are larger voids to fill, more substantial and potentially unanswerable questions to ask.
With that, I close the books, realizing maybe it’s best if I don’t classify the trees, best to leave them rooted in the forests of my mind. Leave them rooted and unscathed by research and knowledge for once, listening as they sigh with relief.