SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 – If you spend enough time “in nature,” you make realistic judgments. Sure, nature is grand and beautiful. But it’s also cruel, unforgiving, even obnoxious.
Over the summer I’ve devoted many hours to trimming around each of my 300 planted seedlings and at least that number of volunteers over roughly 15 acres of Björnholm. Lately, I’ve ventured into our “back 40” to blaze hiking trails. Progress is slow but rewarding, especially when I engage in “deep rescue” of small pine imprisoned in a jungle of raspberry bushes guarded by intimidating poplar shoots towering shoulder-to-shoulder. Based on a painstaking census I conducted recently, 48 of the planted white pine remained behind bars in undisclosed locations. Yesterday I discovered—and freed—one of the “Lost 48.”
I’d rescued many other “incarcerated” pine that were so robust, I felt guilty trimming away the surrounding vegetation. It seemed that rather than having stunted the growth of the pine, thorny raspberry plants and crowded poplar had protected their young evergreen friends from voracious deer. Perhaps, I thought, I should praise the “kind and generous” raspberry bushes and poplar for their sheltering altruism.
Yesterday’s encounter was different. The pine that I sprang from its thorny cell looked tortured by cruel and unusual punishment. It was scrawny and misshapen from persistent escape attempts. I donned my rescue gear—leather gloves, helmet with face-shield, a dirty old running jacket, holstered trimmer, and long-handled pruning shears. The gawky raspberry stalks saw me coming. They pushed against my face-shield and hooked my jacket. When I turned, they wound their thorny tentacles around me. As I tried to tear free, the prickly stems fought tenaciously. Poplars, meanwhile, jabbed their lower twigs into my neck.
I reached for the holstered trimmer and staged a comeback. In time I defeated the thorns and knocked away the twigs. Next I took sheers to poplar stems and gave my struggling pine the sunlight in which to flourish.
But what a sorry tree! To stand tall, it’d need a crutch, a stake—which, with poetic justice, I fashioned on the spot from one of the smaller poplars I’d just cut away and tied it against the stem of the pine. Next to the rescued tree, I planted a small orange flag—one of dozens I carry with me to mark fledgling pine I discover in my tree garden.
This pine will survive. With TLC it will flourish—along with all the other pine I care for personally. The prickly raspberry bushes? The madding crowd of poplars? Eventually, they’ll be defeated by my mighty pine forest.
Just then I heard deer hooves pound the earth ahead of me. The large wildlife was taking advantage of the path I’d cut earlier this summer; a section I call the “Upper Chute.” Come November I’ll be stapling bud caps (squares of paper) to the leaders of all my pine to keep the “forest cows” from devouring next year’s growth.
The nature of nature: give it an inch, it’ll grab a mile.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
