When a tree falls in the forest

Now that the smoke is clearing, the moon is exquisitely visible, sometimes with what looks to be a little buddy, the planet Venus, hanging with him in the night sky. It reminds me of classic poetry from my childhood, “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” by Eugene Field, a poem about sweet dreams and sleep, one in which an old moon asks the three children a question: “Where are you going, and what do you wish?” It’s a tough question for anyone to answer thoughtfully. I certainly can’t, as I have seldom known where I was going and I long ago gave up on a wish for happiness. Contentment will do for now.

A while back I was riding the ridge road that runs from a nearby town past my place, admiring the moon as I drove, listening to musician Peter Frampton on the car stereo, who was wondering if I feel like he does. The lyrics were of no help, so I have no way of knowing the answer to his query. Regardless, it’s a terrific song, and I hope he feels some of the same summer contentment I enjoy out here in the woods.

A few months back, as winter was winding down, I stepped from my house and had to stop. From fifty yards away came a sound I’d never before heard. A giant white oak had given up its sentinel position atop a bluff overlooking my hollow, pulling its ancient roots from the dirt and limestone, trunk and branches whooshing down through other trees before hitting the ground, followed by the kind of frozen silence that only winter in the country can provide. Mid-fall there was an enormous crack and yawn, like one might hear in the ice of a deep, frozen lake, a sound that slowed this old heart.

Speaking of hearts, last week I visited a woodworking neighbor to see if he was interested in cutting up the downed tree. When he came to the door I said, “That dead snake out by your shop just about gave me a heart attack.” To which he said, “What dead snake?”

I took him to where I’d seen a huge three/four foot long Western Rat Snake (pantherophis obsoletus), what we in Iowa call a Blacksnake. Obviously it was not dead, as the creature was nowhere to be found. Thinking about my encounter still gives me great pause more than a week later, though my abject fear of the serpent has changed to a bit of respect after reading that fossils have shown that Blacksnakes date back more than fourteen million years, long before one of them offered up an apple. She is at home here. I am the interloper.

Anyway, for decades I have worked in my woods using a bow saw, ax, and hatchet, as I’m on blood thinner and one misstep with a kicking chain saw and, well, I don’t care to envision the scene. The white oak would take me all summer to properly slice, while my woodworking neighbor managed it in two days with his chain saw.

Catalpa trees in the hollow lost their final summer flowers during the last rain, and these days open areas are crazy wild with lavender-colored bee balm and thorny wild black raspberries. There is almost nothing better than picking wild raspberries in the summer heat before retiring to a cool house where a bowl of vanilla ice cream awaits a wild topping. And there is some ancient satisfaction in the knowledge that in a couple of winters there will be the sweet smell of smoke drifting over my place, the smell of white oak burning, keeping my neighbors warm.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. His book “The Iowa State Fair” is available from the University of Iowa Press.