A recent project has me thinking about trees and the memories connected to them. That connection is rooted in the emotions that transpire from people and their relationship to trees. Some people are born with trees, and some people grow their whole lives with trees, and some people pass with trees. And I think the things we do as arborists to preserve that connection is at the core of the craft.

I just completed a small project last week in which a co-dominant black locust separated above the root flare, with the crack extending below grade. Originally, I was going to cable it, but after discussing some of the issues with future management and risk, we decided to prune the large limbs over the neighbor’s property completely off. The majority of the crown remained, and the risk was mitigated effectively.

The tree held a significant place in my client’s heart because it was connected to someone that had passed. So even though the tree remained, I wanted to do something more with the wood, so that memory could be further preserved. So as I worked the tree dicing branches off and working the leads back to their origins, I was careful to cut a few longer lengths of three feet by thirteen inches or so in diameter, as a chainsaw milling project. I figured a shelf or something could be made for inside the house. I was moved by the emotions that this tree had created, and by the memories it had locked in it’s grain.

As my mill pushed through the cut and the slab came free, I was eager to brush it off and look at the wood. It was raining and the dust was wet like cottony sand. The grain was slowly illuminated with the rain, drop by drop, and I could see all of these memories inside like reading a flip book in slow motion. The good years, the bad years, things overcome and sealed away, the tree had written this story in its wood.

Once, some years ago, I had cut a birch tree down, and as we were dragging brush and cleaning up, I noticed a woman sitting on a bench nearby where she wept. I had gone over and asked if everything was alright, and learned that her and her partner had planted that tree many years ago. And they had grown with it together in their lives. And now, her partner was gone, and so too was the tree. I think it took two hours to process the entire tree, thirty or so years of memories hitting the drum and the knives and shattering into a steady stream of tears.

And those things make me feel bad.

I wonder deeply about the trees I love to work in. I wonder who the arborists were before me that made the old pruning cuts, or installed the cable, working for the ones they loved. Who doesn’t love finding a nest of baby squirrels! Or hearing the story about how old Mrs. Danielson would sit with her husband for hours and hours in the swing under the oak tree in the back yard. I wonder what trees looked like when they were planted many years ago, when so-and-so was born, in the front yard, to see it from the front window. It’s so big now! I remember an old, fallen tree that my cousins and I played out for hours in our childhood. ‘The Big Tree’ we called it. I know many neighbors that are divided by trees, both in hard property lines and hard feelings. People get married under trees, and take pictures in front of them too before the big dance, and some people even had their first kiss underneath a tree, or their first who-knows-what-else. So, even though trees are silent, they somehow tell the story of us all.

And the story of the ones we love.