NOVEMBER 14, 2025 – This morning I left town a full two hours later than I’d intended. As I told Beth when she asked what my hold-up was, I said, “Clients come first.” Well, most of the time, anyway.
After dispensing with biz, I backed out of the driveway and stomped on the gas. Today’s weather was absolutely glorious for mid-November, which meant conditions were perfect with my urgent cabin project: protecting the “deer candy”—hemlock and white pine saplings—from deer browsing over the winter months. Unfortunately, the sun sets early, and the two-hour delay would cut well into my project time and goals for the day—erecting protective fences around 30 hemlocks, reserving the white pine bud-capping work for Saturday and Sunday.
Driving non-stop, I arrived at the Red Cabin at minutes before two. After unloading the car, I jumped into my work clothes and started in on the hemlocks. They’d flourished this season, and the larger ones were in full Bob Marley mode—their unorganized dreadlock-like branches arching in all directions. With each tree I had to drop to my knees, coax the barrier into place, then tease the improvised holding stakes (hazel bush stems) through the holes in the fencing material and into the ground. This is not an operation that can be done easily once the air is chilly and the ground is frozen, but a mild fall has spared me the difficulties associated with working in the cold. As I installed each barrier, I felt like a parent making sure his toddler was fully protected against the elements.
But a measure of real concern crossed my mind too. Who will continue this work when I no longer can or worse, when I simply am no longer? Unlike the pine, which, depending on location, can add nearly four feet of vertical growth each season, soon putting the terminal shoots well out of range of browsing deer, the hemlocks grow in many directions, including upward, but not with as much determination.
One year I left unprotected the most important hemlock of them all—Byron and Mylène’s wedding tree, which they’d planted during the big splashy woodland ceremony in 2019. The winter after my omission was especially severe. The deer were starving, and they seized upon the wedding tree as a veritable life saver, if not a whole boxful of Life Savers. By the time they’d finished foraging, the poor tree—about four feet high by that time—had only about three needles remaining. It’s still thin in the foliage department, but for my sake, anyway, at least the wedding tree survived. Its ordeal, however, was irrefutable proof that the deer can do extreme damage if the hemlocks are left to their own devices.
I hadn’t finish with the hemlocks this afternoon before the sun’s repose, so I adopted a game plan for tomorrow to complete the remaining five young trees that require attention. The temperature remained remarkably mild, however, so in the waning light I turned to bud-capping as many white pine saplings as I could manage. To my pleasant surprise, especially against the backdrop of my late start, I bud-capped 80 pine. By the time I finished I was working by the light of a headlamp. This device served me well, since the illumination it provided was in stark contrast to the surrounding darkness. This effect allowed greater focus—and efficiency . . . or so it seemed.
When I found my way back to the cabin (before entering the woods I’d turned on the cabin yard light as a beacon), I was satisfied with today’s progress. Now for an evening of Bruckner symphonies (starting with his first (yesterday evening) and continuing in sequence), book club book reading, and a simple supper of quinoa and brown rice, with pulled chicken on a bed of fresh vegetables and plenty of olive oil—once I’ve “put this post on the board.”
But the day won’t be done until I have a look at the vast star-studded heavens above this little heaven on earth.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
