Pythagoras’ Atlantic White Cedar

It is February and I am in the forest again looking for damage.  I followed my familiar path but it wasn’t the same as it was before the ice.  The wind that followed the wet snow storm was not welcome. A distant sun tells me it is afternoon but I don’t know when the sun will set one last time. The wind stops inside the edge of the trees at the forest floor but still pushes tree tops like they were made of Spandex.  Only the clouds from the northeast tell me of the cold outside of the stillness of the wooded wetlands.

I wonder how many times I have been welcomed here and how many more will I be?

Ornate ice formations in the shadows tell me it is bone cold, worse soon in the fading sun. I don’t yet feel chilled as I am alive beyond the swamps and the nearby river.

I have come here for years. The forest always talks to me.  Today it is silent. Maybe because now I am an assassin. My assignment is to kill a friend, easily one hundred years old.  Mercy killing? Euthanasia? Rebirth? Will my coup d’ gras bring the reincarnation of not-humana that Pythagoras talked about? If my quest were severing a fallen cypress from its roots I could invoke the beliefs of Zoroaster but the magnificent white cedar might only be treasured in teachings of Druids.

Killing the cedar will happen. Progress waits for no one and no tree can stop my progress.

The fallen Atlantic white cedar awaits my saw. I loved this tree since I first saw it in 1990.  Back then it rose far over the tumps and knees and tops of the otherwise cypress fortress. All great things have a flaw it seems. Age, enemies and just our own too much are fatal for people and so for massive trees, too. Those implacable enemies of time and wear leap the moment just the smallest weakness appears. Just the lifting of one edge of the fifteen foot root spread, just one breach in the matted roots of the swamp was all that wind and ice needed then to topple the giant.

And now my twenty year friend is my prey.

I can’t pass through the massive trunk or around it if I am to walk again to the river.  And that is my goal.  The tree must go but it ignores me. It lives here now, on a deathly angle, with roots exposed like Southern petticoats. Couldn’t I just pull the tree upright? Wouldn’t it still live?  No mercy.

What kind of wind bore such malice to an old tree? Surely, it came from the left or the right. Or maybe all the forces of Nature had an interest in the death of the tree.

The old boardwalk is hiding in the frozen swamp on one side and the other side, still holding on to the cedar, is warming.  Ice free.

The river makes no sound.  The forest makes no sound. I hold my breath.  I make no sound.  I don’t know this forest any more. No birds; none. No sound to say I am alive.

The old chain saw is my long time friend too.  That I know. Even after all these years, I feel it tell me, “Ready,” after just a couple of pulls on the starter rope.  I tell myself that the first step to a warm fire back home begins with cutting in the cold.  Today, that idea doesn’t work for me in this now distant forest. I am now chilled like never before though my feet are dry and hands warm. It is almost as the tree was me and I am killing a part of me.

If I am to be the tree or the tree to be me then who am I?  Am I a mathematical composite of Pythagoras, a construct of matter and energy that is simply passing through time and space?

So noisy. The hum of the hot steel knives on the belt tearing at the life of my friend changes as the saw attacks, ripping deeper into heart wood.  Bark, grain, bind and twist are part of the new world. The tree will no longer be alive. 

The old tree takes the first assault but changes little despite the internal carnage.  Bright chunks of sweet, hot cedar chips lie on the ground and on top of the majestic trunk. The tree is not as wide and not as strong. I see the tree now as a bull after the picador, the grey whale after the orca.

The snow starts falling on the cedar and me. The sun walks away.  The river is just on the other side of the bending trunk. Wedges of wood that a minute ago were tree tell me that the widowmaker will soon succumb. 

I stop, holding my breath.  I am care about my walk through the forest but I am ending the life of a magnificent living being, crippled as it is. The amputated stump won’t re-grow.  There is no new growth coming along from the exposed root mass. This isn’t a swamp maple turning red in February in hopes of Spring in March no matter the injury to roots and trunk. This is a cedar.

It is just that simple.  The tree is in the way.  Cut it up and move on.  That is my task.  It is too late to turn back.  Assassin.

The last two inches of the massive trunk are gone. No binding.  The old saw cuts an edge, barely even steaming as it warms the cold, cold air. 

The tree is in two pieces. One end, 78 feet long, iced at its branches, spears into the swamp.  The other, a mere two feet long is starting to move.  Slowly, slow enough I can watch, the forest I don’t know any more is taking back its roots.  Slowly; I watch, fascinated. And now the old mass of swamp, roots and two feet of trunk eases itself to upright.  Even in death the steadfast symbol is still standing for what is right about the wooded wetlands.

I rejoice. Why doesn’t apply.

The path to the river is also my friend.   My friend the tree was the enemy of my friend the path. Even as the cedar moved it stayed. I look back at where I was and where I am now. The path was broken, yet is still there. A fallen cedar blocked the avenue yet those stops weren’t forever.

The branches of the tree only appear above nearly 50 feet of ramrod straight trunk.  Pythagoras would look for phi.  The first branch is actually 49 feet, 7.5 inches up from the top of the root line.  Magical phi lived in the tree. The tree will live again, as will I.

The path to new life now begins with the sacrifice of my revered cedar.  The old tree had lost its dominion and had to be killed. That is the way of the wetlands.  I only wonder what the forest thinks but no longer says to me.

As I walk back through the beeches, ironwoods, hickories and red oaks, I see a white cedar seedling that I missed before.  Just two inches tall, the cycle of life is here.

But death? I still don’t know. I’ll ask the forest tomorrow.