OCTOBER 17, 2024 – “Garden of Eden” is how I think of the 20-acre (or so) tree garden within the larger woods of Björnholm along the northwest shore of Grindstone Lake in northwestern Wisconsin. Perhaps I get carried away by the peak foliage and gorgeous weather that has prevailed since I arrived here Tuesday afternoon. In late May and through the month of June, the ticks, gnat swarms and flocks of mosquitoes (the critters are as big as birds, after all) can render the woods the opposite of Edenesque. But now is the prime time to be here, and for the past two days I’ve spent many hours working in what is most definitely a wondrous arboreal “garden.”
Over the years my connection to this place has been defined by the seasons. In my early years, it was strictly a summer place. My grandparents would open the old cabin in late spring, spend the entire summer here, then decamp in early September, though in some years my dad and grandfather came up for a weekend in the late fall to cut, split and stack firewood for the next season. (Until I was about nine, my grandmother cooked on a wood-burning stove and oven, and during summer cool spells, which seemed more common back then than now, the big split-stone fireplace was often aglow with a well-supplied fire in the evening.) Except for Dad and Grandpa on a fall firewood weekend, no one else in the family thought about the cabin in any seasonal context other than summer.
Twenty-nine years ago, however, my wife and I built our own cabin on land adjoining the west end of Björnholm. We call it a cabin—the “Red Cabin,” since it’s painted the same color with (white trim) as the original one-room real log cabin that occupied the site when we acquired it; an old cabin that people in the area called, the “red cabin.” Unlike that rustic dwelling, our place is fully plumbed, wired, insulated, and equipped with a regular propane-fueled forced air furnace, supplemented by a wood-burning stove. In other words, the “Red Cabin” is a four-season dwelling, and over the past three decades, few years have passed when I haven’t been here for at least one night, two days every single month of the year. I’m now intimately familiar with the contrasts among the four seasons as each takes its turn shaping the beauty of lake and woods.
Since I planted all those hundreds of white pine seedlings in the “tree garden” seven years ago, my time and focus up here has turned away from the lake and into the woods. The trees I planted are doing exceptionally well. Many are better than 16 feet tall. This year I’ve begun pruning them. For each of the previous seven years, I’ve bud-capped all the planted trees plus many of the hundreds—perhaps thousands—of “volunteers” that have set down roots.
Today the garden was in its prime. With a clear blue sky overhead and a relentless south wind blowing all cares away, and with much of the understory (ferns, woodland shrubs) having closed up for the season, the many folds and rises in the land are now exposed. Moreover, the pine in their lush green attire stand out among the oak, maple and aspen in their autumnal red, orange and yellow.
Except for a couple of breaks to catch up on email, I worked hard today in the tree garden. My primary project was construction of a 24-foot wooden walkway along part of a primary trail that gets a bit swampy in the spring. For much of the walkway I used old dock sections that my dad had built out of treated lumber some 50 years ago. They are as sturdy today as they were the day he completed them. Thus, all I had to do was design and build a base to accommodate the repurposed dock.
I took my time, savoring every aspect of my surroundings—the warm sun, the wind singing through the trees, the brilliant colors that Mother Nature had splashed across the entire garden. I felt my dad’s presence. He would’ve been amazed, I think, by the scale of garden. Nearly 70 years ago he’d undertaken a similar project just down the drive a piece from the old Björnholm cabin. He called it his “clearing,” where he’d cut away poplars and other brush to foster the growth of 20 or 30 white pine “volunteer” saplings. Those couple dozen or so trees are now 70 tall.
I imagined the conversation I would’ve had with dad—“Look at the trees in this section and how well they’re doing!” —“Yes, they are. Look at this year’s growth—two feet, that one; surely a full yard, those over there.” In this imagined encounter, we took turns pointing out great beauty, small and large as we moved along my network of trails that he wouldn’t recognize. We were in total agreement that this season—fall—was the best of all.
I then mentioned what I knew we shared: a vision for this land as these trees become giants in the earth.
At noon I took a break to walk the shoreline path. The wind teased me along the way, tugging at my cap and co-mingling its constant rush with the sound of cresting waves crashing on the rocks below. I can’t walk this property without thinking of my parents and grandparents and the great gift that they bestowed upon us, their grandchildren. In my musings today, I realized that I’ve been enjoying Björnholm for over twice as long as my grandparents had and as long as Dad had—70 years.
But now the family is scattered. Some haven’t set foot here for years, and only briefly when they did. Who among them, I wondered, will ever experience this Garden of Eden—especially on such a glorious day as today? I feared the answer, but I coaxed my thoughts forward. Does it matter who treads upon this land and among the trees—the majestic oaks, the brilliant maples, and the pine . . . the pine, which are destined to tower over this garden of trees? Or more to the point, does it matter whether anyone becomes as familiar with this patch of earth as I am?
Visible from lofty sections of the garden, the western horizon moved slowly to consume the light of the sun. I thought of the great minds that studied the movements of stars, planets and galaxies; Newton, Einstein and so many others. Did they think of the sun as “rising” and “setting” or were the laws of gravity and relativity too powerful to allow a poetic observation. Those great minds were tuned into the big picture, the big questions, the big answers. Me? My world is much smaller, but within the narrow confines of my daily existence, I marvel at the many wonders that cover the ground I walk and the extraordinary beauty I encounter in the tree garden. I can truly say, it is my Garden of Eden.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
