From my office window, I observe the young arborist rise in the bucket to the top of our 90-foot high Yellow Ash — the one that stands tall and proud but leafless in our front yard. The tree has been dying of Yellow Ash Disease for many years and with its large limbs falling to the ground below, my husband Jimmy and I feel it's time to let the tree go.
I watch the executioner in awe. He directs the bucket with his right hand while slicing the small branches off with the chainsaw in his left, then circles back and buzzes three-foot sections off the main limbs, which fall to the ground with a thud. Although the chainsaw smells of burning oil and sounds like a loud dentist's drill, I cannot stop watching the young man work at his craft. He looked small and nondescript on the ground, but way up in the bucket he seems strong and masterful as he deftly maneuvers his gas-powered sword through the tree's outer bark. As jarring as the scene is, I find beauty in the shower of light brown shavings twinkling to the ground like autumn snow.
It pains me to take the Ash down because I've felt a special kinship with trees since the first time I climbed high in the pines located in the backyard of my childhood home. Back then parents weren't worried about kids falling out of trees. My mother used to push me outside for an hour each day, shouting through the screen door "go climb some trees" before latching it shut — presumably to regain her sanity. Sitting on the lofty branches, I daydreamed of faraway places I'd seen in National Geographic, having my own horse to ride after school or marrying Davy Jones from The Monkees.
At the end of fourth grade, my dad bought me a space trolley and strung it twelve feet off the ground between two sturdy pines. I'd hoist myself up the five wooden steps he nailed into the trunk, pull the trolley harness over my head and push off with my feet as the metallic sound of the pulley twanged overhead. I pretended to be a bird flying through the air as I zipped back and forth between the pines. And the first boy who kissed me in college, did so after he twirled me round and round on a tire swing dangling from a giant sycamore as my toes drew circles in the dirt. When I stopped spinning, he bent down, cupped my chin and kissed me as the moon peeked at us through the branches.
It takes about an hour and a half for the arborist to shape the Ash into a primitive totem pole. His colleague then lassos ropes around what's left as he makes horizontal cuts along its base. With his helper pulling on the ropes, the arborist pushes against the tree. It rocks back and forth a few times, eventually tumbling onto the ground where they continue to dismember the Ash until it's small enough to be tossed into the chipper. Soon only a wooden stump remains.
I open the window and ask the arborist, "How old was my tree?"
"Based on the number of rings fanning out from the stump," he yells up, "it's anywhere from 60 to 80 years old."
I can only imagine what the Ash has witnessed during its life. It holds the secrets, joys and sorrows of the families that lived in our old home and has seen my adopted hometown of Ashland grow from a small village of a few thousand to a bustling town of 16,000. Its upper branches could see for miles around, probably as far as the state park at the end of our road. During the summer months when I open my home office window, the ash often doubled as a symphonic stage for the tens of birds singing their avian hearts out for anyone lucky enough to be walking by.
Our one-acre lot showcases a wide variety of trees; one of the main reasons we bought the home in 1997. The gnarly Dogwood guarding our front door greets each spring with a welcome back banner of bright pink petals; while the Sugar Maple hovering over the stonewall shades a thick carpet of lime-green moss.
Family, friends and neighbors have encouraged me to rip out the lush landscaping that swaddles our home. "I'd cut down most of the trees and pull everything out," advises my friend Dana, a real estate agent. "It will 'open up' the house and increase your curb appeal." Our neighbor, Marco, has asked me if he can take down a beautiful Tamarack tree that hugs the sky near the lot line because it litters needles and cones on his camper.
But while Marco and many others I know see trees as dispensable statues of bark, leaves and limbs, I've always seen trees as mysterious magicians, capable of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary with their wand-like branches. Capable of letting little girls fly and making first kisses taste like the moon.
Giulietta "Julie" Nardone hugs trees in Ashland, Massachusetts, where she also kayaks, hikes and sings. Her stories have been published in The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, Skirt Magazine, Underwired Magazine, and on "Common Ties" and NPR via WGBH. Read her blog at http://www.giuliettathemuse.com/blog.