In the 1980s my father decided to build a log house. We’d just moved from farmland to the woods and with no money, we decided to make a house the hard way.
The first tree was a tall, straight Douglas fir. I didn’t know that at the time. It was just a big evergreen. Dad was experienced and cautious so it took a long time to cut the notch and make sure the tree fell in the right direction. I was bored, holding my field guide to North American trees. Looking around, I realized I also needed a field guide to native plants. My father eventually said that I needed a field guide to field guides. Because stepping into those woods opened a whole new world.
Huckleberries
My first task was to lean way back, craning to watch the far-away top of the tree for tiny tremors that said the tree was thinking about giving up. When I saw those minute movements become more defined, turning into swaying, becoming a distinctive lean, I was to warn dad so he could get out of the way.
Except that he had a chainsaw running and ear protection on. I remember jumping up and down, waving the field guide, screaming, ‘it’s going!’. He heard in time to get away.
When it hit the ground, the fall was the sound of thunder rolling up through the canyons, bouncing off the ridge, echoing back. It was the avalanche explosion deep into the ground that hit the soles of your feet and slammed upward through your spine. And that was just the initial impact. The tree bounced upward over six feet high, coming down to earth again with the thunder and echoes and impacts.
The air was full of the sharp smell of crushed needles, torn bark, sap, and flattened salal, ferns, and Oregon grape.
Japanese Cedar
While dad took a break to smoke his pipe, I climbed onto the trunk. With a tape measure, I walked the length of the tree, hanging on to and weaving among upright branches. There was a whole micro-universe in those branches. Bird nests and spiders and squirrel holes and woodpecker marks. Moss that made the trunk slippery. Licorice root in its symbiotic relationship with moss and wood, and adding its anise scent to the air. Lichens that hung like gray beards.
Silver-back Fir
In a small notebook I recorded the length of the tree. I measured the width of the butt end. And I flipped through the field guide until I found the name.
That first one. A Douglas fir. With the limbs cut off and the tree bucked into lengths, we got three long, straight logs.
With the old truck and a winch, the logs were laboriously pulled out of the woods where I then had to peel them. I quickly learned to do that immediately after felling. If the tree sat even a day, the bark dried and tightened and then you had to chip it off.
But fresh, the bark slid off in long strips, exposing a layer similar to snot, which is why the bark came off so easily. As I worked, that inner layer changed color. Reddened.
Fir, cedar, alder, big leaf maple, vine maple, spruce
That first tree taught me to see my surroundings, to identify the differences in needles and bark and foliage. To name what I touched. To watch for those first small tremors. To mourn.
We cut a lot of trees for that log house, that never came to be.
That bottom log was the first one. Dad with dreams.
And then I started planting trees. Fir and cedar and oak and sequoia and shore pine. I moved on from evergreens to plant filbert and hazelnut and prune trees, sourwood and cascara, willow and dogwood. To will them to grow tall and strong.
The first sequoia many years ago
Back in those woods, there are now trees reaching thirty feet tall. Northern flickers and woodpeckers bore holes for bugs. Brown creepers run up and down their trunks chirping their autumn songs. Moss catches on. Roots sink deep into ground. Branches reach for the sky.
I wonder if, in their long, slow, dreaming seasons, they forgive.
Lisa Stowe - The Story River Blog 
Man,,I just love reading your words! They are so powerful sometimes. I can hear and feel the fir falling right in front of me… It’s amazing how you do that!!
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Beautifully written. I am obsessed with trees and even thought about doing a photo book.
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I’ve got a serious love relationship with trees, too.
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What a beautiful piece! Love, especially, your description of the tree crashing to the ground. I have often wondered myself if trees forgive, and am reminded of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.
But … why was the house never finished? I sense a longer story.
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There are several stories buried in this one and several reasons why the house was never finished. Dad kind of gave up when I met Art and moved away, his health started failing, but most of all, the logs rotted. We found out after he died that the stuff he bought to treat the logs didn’t work. I think he realized that before any of us and the discouragement after all that work must have been profound. The walls were done, window holes were cut. At the time none of us could figure out why he quit working on it. Then after his unexpected death, we found the rot. The walls had to come down, and I stood there crying when they did.
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That’s so sad. It looked like he did beautiful, meticulous work. And, more than anything else, it was part of him — and you. I’m sorry.
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This post is so especially beautiful. It shows you are ALSO: naturalist, poet and professional photographer. Thanks for sharing all you do to enrich us all. Pat Larson
On Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 8:18 PM, Lisa Stowe – The Story River Blog wrote:
> Lisa posted: “In the 1980s my father decided to build a log house. We’d > just moved from farmland to the woods and with no money, we decided to make > a house the hard way. The first tree was a tall, straight Douglas fir. I > didn’t know that at the time. It was just a big” >
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Thank you Pat. And thanks for sharing the trees with me.
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One doesn’t often consider the micro-universe within a tree – thanks for the reminder.
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I read an amazing non-fiction book a few years ago about the giant redwoods and the young men who first figured out how to climb them for research – by combining rock climbing skills/tools, and old logging techniques. They talked about the micro-universe in those huge old trees, including whole miniature wetlands existing in the big branches. It was absolutely amazing to consider. Those micro-universes were way more than the simple things I found. But I was still in awe of all the life that goes on around us that we aren’t aware of.
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I’m just now reading “The Hidden Life of Trees” and thinking I should share it with you and also buy microscopes for all the children I know. I usually give books and craft projects for them . But I’m so enthralled with the beauty found in science and the poetry to be heard in the quiet groans of trees …, thank you for being in the same world,Lisa. And for describing it do profoundly well!
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That looks like a great book. I read ‘The Wild Trees’ by Richard Preston about the people who climb the giant redwoods to study their microclimates and ecosystems. These guys used a combination of climbing skills from logging and rock climbing tools to scale those giant trees. They’d talk about stringing hammocks and sleeping up high while the tree swayed in winds not felt at ground level. Can you imagine? Being rocked to sleep by a tree? And I think microscopes are an excellent idea.
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