Tall Trees and Crumbling Backroads

A car crashed yesterday on the crumbling backroads of this town. Overnight, the great Pine across from Davee’s liquor mart, the one that grows at three times the pace of any other, so far from any lake, river, or aquifer, extended its roots up through the pavement, forming a natural, unmarked speed bump. So it happened. Early this morning, sweet Mary-Lynn and her scholar son were making their usual commute to that pricey private school across the valley, when they hit the root. Car flipped, bodies recovered. Cremated I expect. And the town mourned as they do for a usual tragedy such as this. Friends and relatives cried, some still are. Some placed flowers at the base of the pine as the workers chiseled and slashed at the protruding root. Some were shocked and needed answers, so they came to me. 

I offer you the same explanation as I did them.

This is the story of the pine. 

...

One of the last fur trappers in the west was a woman. She and her baby son remained in the mountains, collecting pelts, from beaver to bear, for years after the trade had gone out of vogue. She was on the run. A man she had once loved now intended to take her life. I suspect he once thought he loved her too, yet his love was of a violent, belligerent variety. He wanted his child back. As the spring runoff trickled into the valley, so did the mother and son. Spring was the time of hunger. The winter, unusually cold and dark, even for this latitude, left her bony and weak, and her child no longer whimpered. She knew the man would be waiting for them in the valley. She would have to confront him if they were to survive. 

A plump redtail hawk circled above them as she, with child on her back, stumbled to the trickling creek. They drank and napped in the luxurious clay below the high water mark until a sound tugged her from her rest. A soft rustle, emanating from a nearby bramble bush. She loaded her rifle and stuffed cotton into the sunburnt ears of her baby boy. The rustle subsided. She picked up a small stone and threw it at the bush. In a flash of white, a small rabbit darted out of the bush and out into the open. The trapper pulled the trigger. The ground near the rabbit exploded, but the rabbit continued on, unscathed. The bang echoed throughout the valley, three times over. At once she realized what she had done. Not only would their hunger continue, but he surely would have heard the shot. The rabbit paused and looked back, almost as if to taunt the trapper. All of a sudden, in a violent burst of talons and feathers, the rabbit disappeared. The woman looked up. The red tail hawk had stolen what would’ve been her first meal in days. She watched as the hawk carried the rabbit to a nest in a nearby rock outcropping. The hawk landed with grace, and another beak, smaller, more fragile, appeared in the nest. The hawk ripped a piece of furry meat from the rabbit, and fed her young. 

The trapper scooped her son and set off into the thicket, hysterically separating herself from the gunshot. She stopped, listened. Something was moving nearby. This was not the panic stricken hopping of a spooked bunny. The sound of slow footsteps on dead leaves ricocheted off the dense cottonwoods. They were being stalked. Like the stone she had cast at the rabbit, the trapper threw herself into an overgrown bramble bush. She paused, listened. The footsteps approached, faster now. The trapper set her son in the heart of the bush, and darted out into the open. She frantically loaded her rifle and listened. 

The footsteps had stopped. 

Out of nowhere, a polished hatchet collided with the cottonwood next to the trapper. She threw herself on the ground as another whooshed overhead.  The man let out a disappointed grunt as he barreled out of the thicket towards her. She sprang to her feet and aimed the musket, but it was too late. He tackled her to the ground. The rifle flew from her hands and landed with a thud near the bush that housed her child. She gasped and struggled free from his enraged grip. She kicked him hard and he grunted once more. Out of breath, he struggled to his feet as she ran to the tree that held the hatchet. She yanked and it released. The trapper whipped her head around to find the man scrambling towards the rifle. She gripped the hatchet tight, raised it above her head, and released. The hatchet made 3 full rotations before it collided with the man’s skull. He fell limp. The trapper collapsed with relief. She wept. 

The trapper did not bury the man, nor did she offer prayer in his wake. He was gone, and she felt stronger than she had in years. She brushed the leaves and dirt off her child and looked toward a nearby rock outcropping.

On the valley floor later that evening, the trapper sat around a fire of her own creation, roasting the birds she had executed. She and her baby feasted on what little meat the hawks offered. 

After, the trapper buried the bones of their meal and uttered the prayer she had denied her ex husband. His body was left to the forest, which would consume him. The next morning, she passed by his remains to find a sapling protruding from his chest. The youthful pine needles lay softly on his rotting skin. So it began. 

As the snowpack declined over the next century, the creek dried up, and the cottonwoods disappeared. A town was founded, and a liquor mart was established. The same instinct that compelled the trapper to feast on innocent birds drove a new mother to enroll her son in a private school out of her price range. And so they passed the tree on each commute. And on each commute the roots grew closer to the road. 

Pavement usually halts the roots of pines. Yet today we see bulging roots where yesterday there were none. 

There is an undeniable energy at the core of that tree. An unrelenting vigor that drives its growth. As the pine grows and the pavement crumbles, the roots will eventually overtake the road. Davee’s Liquor Mart will be forced to close, and Davee along his wilting mother will have to find another means of income. The town will eventually dry up like the creek before it. The pine will remain. It will persist long after we lose the words for hands and cradles. This is the way things go in small towns with tall trees and crumbling backroads.