trees stillwater made home (2018)

 trees stillwater made home

Looming and above all the sycamore and its metal bucket earring grown into a

limb decades ago, full of rusty bullet holes and mulch of aeon leaves, but prior

in memory was the stout and gnarly trunk of a transpired elm, limbless and 

statuesque, gaunt. I scuffed my knees on its ancient sharp bark, intentionally,

jealous of baby brother grant hogging all the mommy love and cooing time. 

The tree was soon in our chimney smoke, warming our beds.

Above the basketball goal at the edge of the concrete slab over our storm

cellar was a big tree, not sure what kind. Like a catalpa tree, with seeds in a pod,

but these seeds were grape sized, very hard and deep brownish-black, four or

five to a pod, in a gooey kind of jelly, and the outer shell of the pods leathery

when fresh, then crispy. It was a pretty good climbing tree,  but nothing like

the sycamore. Around this tree and the basketball hoop, handmade by dad

in a rectangular shape, large cedar trees formed walls ofgreen hands, helping

toss back the errant shots of hundreds of hours of basketball fun.

Under these cedar trees, which grant and i cleaned out of leaves sticks and 

whatnot, we built cities and roads, constructed empires of blocks of wood,

toy trucks and tractors and leggos, and sometimes a litter of kittens in

a carboard box with a towel over the top so they won't get out. Cedar trees

not the best to climb in for the sap, and the scratchy itchy limbs, but the 

smell so good, and the deep dense camoflage and shade of its nature.  There

were nests to peer into, but taught not to bother them, and to never handle

the baby birds.

The cherry tree we planted produced the best sour cherries, pie on the 

picnic table, homemade ice cream in a hand cranked old wood barrel sort 

of thing, and the mystery of dry ice, and perhaps we had a pear tree, an

apricot tree. Mulberry trees fruit was fun, but only good to eat fresh and

when perfectly ripe it was incredible, the purple indigo stains all around

the ground, and in the bird shit, prominent on windshields and the basket

ball arena of this childhood. Get a soldier with a parachute and go up the

sycamore, to the end of the branch near the top, and heave it off so that

the parachute deploys and doesn't end up tangled terminally stuck.

Balsa wood planes, and model airplanes, cars, and spaceships were all at

the shop in town that also sold aquariums and tropical fish. It was a prime

destination to be left for an hour, near across the street was a miniature

golf course, and also the ice cream place with a zillion flavors.

Blackberries grew all around the section lines, red dirt roads paved in

typical gravel. On the land, there were persimmon trees, down below the

pond's dam, and damn your mouth if you tried to eat one not ripe. There

was a cuckoo who lived to laugh at those who tried persimmons not quite

ready, a cuckoo stationed there like a cloud. When perfect ripe, the 

persimmon was not too shabby, not too shabby. 

Hundreds of pines, planted when I was a baby, grew year by year as I

grew and ran through them with bows and arrows and baseball mits full

of rocks or pockets full of fireworks, hundreds of pines wet in the rain

or covered in snow and ice so heavy they bend over and get warped for life,

summer blistering hot the sap pops their bark open, the good years of wet

and lush make their candles, their branch tips slowly open out reverse

umbrellas, broken off in strong winds, little brooms, riding our bikes over

the carpet of pine needles, getting paid per wheelbarrow of death-dry 

needles we'd haul to the burn pile, smouldering all weekend, some lawn

chairs and beer cans, our three acre spread had so many spots to pioneer,

there were attempts to settle the pines with a tree house, also to 

use piled stone for various forts, but vetoed by parents, whereas simple

lean-tos of dead branches or scrap wood was usually fine, until it had to 

meet the burn pile.

The view from the top of our house rose above most all the trees, 

most certainly the ones bordering and surrounding it, so one could really

see into the distant horizons in all directions for a good long ways. A

knowledge of weather spent atop trees or balanced on the peak of

a two story house, and practice jumping ten feet, as well as hanging 

upside down to show off, that's the view a kid has on where they grow

up. We had trees, and big sky. We had crazy clouds, hail, and lightning

storms that would rattle the glass and flash and boom all in the wrong

order. 

The storm cellar was a concrete slab that served as our home's main

entrance, a door leading down into actual cellar room always spiderweb

covered, and often six inches or a foot of water, and sometimes frogs,

or a random scorpion down there, with ancient wood shelves and their

bottles of forgotten dandelion wine, so gross and dusty looking, the

entire cellar dismal not much of a refuge, tornado or not. The door

would rot over the years, and then be a hazard as the nearby basketball

court was the slab, roof and floor, of the cellar. We may have gone down 

once for an impending tornado, but I don't think so. The flimsy wood

door would have gone sailing off in bits and we'd of been sucked into

the eye of the winds.

The cedar trees all around our home facing the highway, tall and thick,

part of the sound of night and sleep, with weather sweeping water and

slapping branch tips , up to the windows curtainless and clear. 

SE Portland