In the Name of Love

All my life I’ve loved trees. More than most people.

And I mean that both ways.

I’ll take a tree for companionship any day over a loud-talking, gum-smacking, wise-ass know-it-all all windbag who won’t shut up until he’s bragged about every spelling bee, strip poker, or Trivia Pursuit game he’s ever entered, lost, or won.

Or a needy, gushy woman who can’t stop talking till she’s confessed every heart-break, faux pas, and time she’s been done wrong so often, you can’t help but memorize her words, and then they get stuck in your head like a Barry Manilow earworm you can’t get rid of.

I also mean that I really love trees while most people either kinda like them, or take them for granted until the day the temp spikes, the concrete burns, and their tongues hang down to their knees it’s so hot. Suddenly, they love trees.

But it never lasts. They go back to cursing them the next time they have to rake leaves or walk by a grove of ripe Ginkos.

Meanwhile, I love trees, rain or shine, hot or cold, spring or fall.

I consider them my extended family and a few redwoods, oaks, and a quaking aspen or two are my best friends.

And no, I wasn’t abused as a child or anything as Dickensonian as that. My folks were hard-working, hard-loving, and sometimes hard-fighting. While they never laid a hand on me, they loved having it out with each other. I think throwing things and hearing glass smash against the wall while they ducked was a form of foreplay for them. Once they lunged at each other and started wrestling all over the living room floor, tearing at each other’s clothes, it was on.

Fortunately for my young, curious eyes, they made their way into the bedroom before the R switched over to X.

When I’d scream, “Mom! Dad! Stop!” they’d laugh and say, wait until you hit puberty.

But I swore on the family Bible that rarely got opened, that I would never hit anybody. No boy, no girl, and especially not puberty, whoever she was. There was a gal named Chastity in my third-grade class, but no puberties.

Be that as it may, I saw and heard far too much. Every night, I prayed that I would never be like them and that puberty would leave me the hell alone. And that if she and I ever met, I’d be so nice to her, never in a million years would she dream of hitting me.

See, I was a pacifist even back then. Albeit a quiet one.

I rarely spoke at home. Or at school. Only if called on. And when I was, sometimes I told the wrong answer to save my hide. Smart kids got bullied, and it only took a few black eyes and bruised egos to dumb me down.

After Sam Meuller almost broke my nose and I managed to get the bleeding stopped, I hid in the woods so he couldn’t follow me yelling, “Howard, the Coward” at the top of his lungs.

But just to make extra sure, I found a tall oak and climbed up to a place where I could sit in the crotch between the trunk and a huge branch that took my weight. I threw my arms around that trunk and sobbed. Cries only for the tree’s ears.

Do trees have ears?

Of course. They’re great listeners.

You can tell them anything and they won’t flinch. The redwood behind the library knew all about Mom and Dad, and how they hurled ‘B’ words at each other. I didn’t tell the birch by our church that, lest she think I was talking about her. But the redwood’s tough. He could take it.

Instead, I told her about my plans to grow up and be an arborist. And when I did, she beamed at me by waving her branches and clapping her leaves.

Most kids my age had no idea what an arborist is or does and I didn’t tell them. When they thought it had something to do with a harbor or labor, I didn’t correct them. They could look it up like I had to look up puberty. Turned out she wasn’t a real girl at all. But a condition. Knowing that got me praying all the harder for her not to hit me.

But hit me she did. And hard.

As in embarrassing hard-ons at the worst possible moments. Like the time I got up in front of the class and gave a book report about Dr. Alex Shigo or Wangari Maathai who won the Nobel Prize for planting millions of trees over in Africa.

Luckily for me, she had a funny name, and I could turn my back on the class while I wrote it real slow on the blackboard and imagined jumping in the Arctic Ocean to get back to normal.

That was bad enough, but I shuddered to think about that happening to me if or when I was alone with a girl. I didn't have to worry, though. No girl I knew wanted to be alone with me. And the ones I got crushes on weren’t girls anyway.

They were grown women like Susan Simard, that forest expert who discovered Mother Trees and how they identify and talk to their offspring trees with the help of the fungi that live along their roots. She’s blond, pretty, and, I’m sure, married. So I figured there’s no real harm in having a crush on her. She couldn’t see where my hand went when I read her books.

Still, the kids teased me about hugging and kissing trees. Said nasty things about what I do to them in the forest, but none of it was true.

Yes, I loved them, but with what our minister called agape love. Not carnal love. I saved that for Susan.

Once I turned sixteen, I got a part-time job at a nursery. Not a babysitting nursery, but a plant nursery that sold trees. My job was to keep them watered, fed, and repotted as needed until they sold. Put them out in the morning, and take them in before we close. I gave them each a name and talked to them when no one was around.

I worked as many hours as they’d let me so I could save for college.

Got my BS in three years and couldn’t wait to get my first post off in some national or state park, where I’d see a lot fewer people and a lot more trees.

Wasn’t meant to be.

Those jobs are hard to get.

So I ended up here in town, working for the city of San Diego, mostly trimming trees with a chainsaw so they don’t hit utility wires or commercial buildings. I hate having to amputate limbs like that, as necessary as everyone’s convinced it is.

I always apologize to the tree before I even get the saw out of the truck. I know seeing that thing coming at them makes them scream inside and stops their sap cold.

So I talk to them nice and gentle and explain how I’m going to take the absolute least off I can and do it as fast as possible, so it only hurts for a few minutes. Which means more horrible noise when I set that sucker saw on high.

Once the deed is done, I haul away the fallen limbs and cut them up later. Never in the presence of Mama Tree unless there’s no other way to get them in my truck. It’s a matter of the respect and dignity I wish we all had.

So the day came, as I feared it would, that I had to do the dreaded deed.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t pass the buck. There was no one to pass it to, anyway. Larson was out on disability after that horrible fall where he landed on his back, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. And Mandy was on maternity leave. So yes, it fell to me, so to speak.

I drove as slowly as I could to, of all places, La Jolla.

I parked the truck and hiked in to get the lay of the land.

Before I got close enough to see the infected tree, I heard strange humming sounds coming from its direction.

Oh, man, wouldn’t you know it? A cluster of long-hair hippie types in holey jeans and bra-less women in free-flowing flimsy skirts encircled the tree, hands linked. They weren’t just hugging it with their arms, they hugged it with their whole bodies.

My heart sank below my feet.

Not just because I had to take down this beauty, but because I was one of them in spirit if not affectation.

Hard enough to do the deed alone, but with these folks singing and chanting, it would take all the nerve and bluster I wasn’t sure I had.

One of them saw me and my uniform before I could figure out what to say. “The Axe Man’s here,” she announced.

Raising my arms, I said, “I come in peace. Unarmed.”

They all turned and stared, then made a human barricade between me and the tree. “You can't have Torrey,” a blustery redhead said, crossing her arms. “We don't care what you say or who sent you.”

I fished out a business card showing my creds with the city logo and all that. “In spite of the uniform, I’m one of you.”

“Yeah, right, Mister,” a young dreadlocked man said, putting his arm around the redhead. “If you came in peace, turn around and go in peace.” He spat on the ground. “Now.”

“Everywhere I go, I go in peace,” I told them. “But I have a question for you. Who’s heard of Pitch Canker?”

The kids looked from one to another. “I didn’t know trees got cancer,” a shrimp of a girl said.

“Not cancer. Canker,” I told her. “But for Torrey Pines, it's just as deadly and highly contagious.”

One of the girls dug in her pocket for a handi-wipe and scrubbed her hands.

“No, you can’t get it. Just the Torreys.” I pointed to a nearby grove with lots of young trees in it. “Those young ones there are the most susceptible.”

They moved en masse to the grove and spread their arms around as many trees as they could.

I followed them. “Here’s the deal. We let the Canker spread and take the whole grove. Or we sacrifice this one who’s lived a long and happy life in order to—”

“How long?” Dreadlocks asked.

“Over a hundred years,” I said. “And taking this one spares all the baby and teenage trees.”

“How do you know it’s happy?” He asked, giving me the side-eye.

“It told me,” I said, going back to the tree and putting my hand on its rough bark.

“Yeah, right,” the dude said. “Ranger Rick talks to trees, y’all.”

They all glared at me like I’d insulted their mothers. In a way, I guess I had. “It’s true. And they respond.”

“Right.” He tugged his hair. “And tell you to kill them.”

“Not in those exact words,” I said. “They tell me to save all their kin I can.”

“Prove it, he said pulling himself up to full height.

Oh crap. Now what? But I didn’t have to do the deed right then and there.

I could let these kids think they won and come back at a time when they’re likely to be protesting at a Tesla dealer or some such. But that felt too much like Howard the Coward.

I took a deep breath. “Of course you all know about mycelium, right? How, with their help, all these trees connect through their root systems, and how Mother Trees feed the younger ones?”

The kids nodded, but looking at the way their eyes shifted around the clump of them, I wasn’t convinced.

“Good.”

I walked over to the grove, pulled a metal tape measure from my tool belt, and sized up the young shoots. “Just what I thought. These babes are twice as big as they should be based on things like climate, rainfall, drought, and whatnot.

Pointing to the Mama Tree, I continued. “That’s cause Mama over there’s been sacrificing for them. She’s gone without water and other nutrients so they can have more.”

I broke off a branch and handed it to the redhead. “See if you can break this.”

She studied it a moment, then put the branch against her thigh and it snapped easily. Too easily given its thickness. “Wow,” she said.

“Exactly.” I took out a pen knife and cut into one of the pieces. The wood offered no resistance. “See how porous her wood is.”

Dreadlocks was not impressed. “Huh,” was all he said.

“Some of that’s from the Canker, of course. It’s killing her from the inside out. If a big storm came along, or a lightning bolt, it’d be all over for her.”

I put my knife away and looked at each one of them in the eye. “Anyone ever have to put a pet down?”

They all nodded.

“Why didn’t you just let nature take its course?”

“It’s more humane to end their suffering,” a lass with a nose ring said.

A few of her friends chimed in with yeses and that’s rights.

“This is similar.” I sighed. “And if she spoke English, she’d tell you that herself.”

A buzz went around the group, so low I couldn’t quite make out the words.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’m going back to my truck to get my stuff. You’re welcome to stay and watch, but you may not want to.”

I paused for emphasis and to give my parched throat some water.

“So why not say your goodbyes, bless her, or sing something soothing. Then you go your way, and I’ll…do my job.”

With that, I turned and headed to my truck without looking back.

When I got there, I had to sit and collect myself. My hands shook and I needed them steady. Felling a pine was hard enough, but to do it with those kids carrying on the way I imagined they would? Not sure I was up for that.

I drank some more water, said a prayer, and chanted a few nam myo ho ren gai kyos to regroup. And give them time to am-scray. When the shadows got long, I had to get started.

By the time I got back to the Torrey, the kids had gone. All but one.

A quiet shy kid I hadn’t noticed before. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied.

“What’s up?”

The kid looked at the ground and then up at me. “Can I watch?”

Oh, heck. Was this a planted action that would backfire on me? “I guess so, but why?”

“Well,” he said, digging a toe in the dirt. “You don’t just love trees. You know trees. Personally. You take care of them, right?”

“Yep, I do.”

“You’re like a tree doctor, right?” He looked up at me, this time meeting my gaze. “Or a vet.”

I nodded. “You could say that.”

“I got to hold Rusty when we had to put her down. I didn’t want her to be alone” The kid’s chin quivered. “This feels a bit like that.”

“It is,” I said. “Only it’s kinda hard to hold a tree.”

He smiled and picked up the two halves of the branch we’d fooled with earlier. “I’ll hold her like this.” He backed way, way off and sat down, his back resting on one of the teen pines.

With that, I put a hand on the old girl and whispered, “You know this is for the good of all.”

The branches waved and the needles rustled as I pulled the chain on my saw.