Each summer I try to get out for a few days
on a solo canoe trip. I pack up my little canoe with everything
I need to travel, eat, and sleep. I am self-contained,
self-sufficient, and alone in the wilderness.
On the second day of my solo trip this summer
I was paddling along the shoreline, exploring, breathing in the
fine summer air, relaxing with every stroke. The simplicity of
life in the canoe is very appealing. I felt I could stay there
forever.
As I paddled along the northern shore of the
lake on the second day, I looked deeply into the forest. It
changed every few hundred metres - from birch to alder, to
maple and pines. A ridge rose up, supporting a beautiful red
pine forest. There was little undergrowth there, so I could see
far up the hill. I felt the call of the forest, and parked the
canoe so I could walk within it.
I secured the canoe on a sloping bedrock
shore. Then I stepped into the softest ever carpet of pine
needles. Most of the trees I walked under were red pines. There
were a few white pines, some small red maples, and maybe a
white birch or two. I wandered along the ridge, parallel to the
lake. It had a very nice feel.
Halfway along the ridge, a white pine fell
many years ago. Perhaps about 80 years old, it had been tall
and straight.
Likely, it had been taller than its red pine
neighbours at the time it blew over. It had been growing on a
little sloped bedrock rise, so it hadn't much soil to secure
the roots on the upper side. A strong wind 10 or 15 years ago
pulled it away from the rock, and it fell to the ground. But it
didn't die.
It now lies horizontally, with the trunk
suspended half a metre off the ground. The thick roots that had
grown on the lower slope are deep and healthy. They are able to
sustain the life of the tree.
What should have been branches high in the
canopy, are now branches low to the ground. They have taken on
a new shape, rising sideways to the trunk as they turn their
needles to the light from above.
Often when a healthy tree falls in the
forest, the branches on the upper side of the trunk will change
their shape as each tries to become a new, straight, tall tree.
The branches on this white pine didn't do that. They all
transformed themselves into the classical lower branches of the
white pine.
They were long and sweeping. Even the little
branches at the very tip of the tree did not try to turn into
an upright tree. They also became long and
feathery.
A great tragedy had befallen this tree. Had
it remained standing, it would have grown taller and stronger.
In another hundred years or two, it would
have become a magnificent grandmother of the
forest.
When it fell, it might have just given up and
died.
Or it may have become misshapen as each of
its branches tried to become a new tree. Instead, it accepted
the tragedy of the fall with grace. It turned its branches to
the sun, and reached out in beauty.
Viki Mather lives by a lake near Sudbury.
