OCTOBER 3, 2021 – A friend recently gave me Bob Woodward’s bone-chilling book, Peril, in which he details how America nearly cratered last January. Yesterday, after plunging into the book, I realized that to avoid cerebral explosion, I’d have to take a break; far better for mental and physical health to be lost in the tree garden, or more precisely, to be surrounded by nature in its infinite diversity, resilience, and inimitable beauty.
I devoted some effort to “garden work”—posting additional markers along my trail network, staking newfound pine, and cutting brush within a three-foot radius of each “rescued” seedling. In several areas, hundreds of pine have shot out of the ground. I can “see” the garden 10, 20, 50 years from now. In just two years, young pine have altered the look of this land. The vast majority are “volunteers,” though I claim credit for hundreds of white pine, many now higher than my reach.
The taller trees will no longer need to be “bud-capped” (stapling a 4” x 6” piece of paper around the buds of each tree’s leader) next month in protection against browsing deer. New pine are so prolix, however, I’ll be capping well over 1,000 this year (last year I capped 800).
Yesterday was special. First, fall colors were at their peak. Second, the landscape glistened from intermittent sunshine mingled with sprinkles. Third, I needed an escape from Peril . . . and eye-crossing financial spreadsheets that I’d been working on previously.
Under such circumstances the garden was my refuge. I took it slowly, finding wonders at every step—oddly beautiful fungus, maple leaves ablaze, rain drops sitting like sailors aboard poplar leaves, old logs softened by coats of moss, stones freshly washed by the rain, and yet another white pine seedling peeking up between leaves—on its journey toward the sky and the day when an eagle will perch upon the tree’s wily crown and see beyond the realm.
At one juncture in my wanderings, I sat down on a log to admire the scene—in autumnal light, trees native to this corner of the world surrounded by an array of plants, all in various stages of transition from summer’s green to autumn’s palette.
From this vantage point, spreadsheets and Peril seemed much farther away than the Red Cabin. I stretched nirvana out as far as I could by ignoring digital time on my smartphone and by observing every detail of the natural world around me, a world ostensibly as infinite, certainly as wondrous, as the stars that fill the endless heavens beyond our finite planet.
Eventually, my phone rang . . . as everyone’s phone inevitably does. It was my wife. “Where are you?”
“In the tree garden.”
“Do you want to take us [her and friend Sue, the remaining guest from “girls’ week” at the Red Cabin] for a boat ride?”
“Sure.” I said. I’d have to leave the garden, but in the bargain I could further defer spreadsheets and . . . Peril.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
