Gratitude for Freddy the Fallen Tree

The Mendocino Forest flanks the two miles of dirt road from the highway down to our sweet cottage in the hollows. When the rain drenches the soil, the earth loosens and slides, exposing roots of the Madrone, Douglas Fir and Oak trees that eventually lose their foundation and topple over. After a heavy rain, the trees fall across the road so frequently that we travel with a chainsaw.

I watch with awe and fear as Joey expertly trims the branches that I pull off the road and throw down the steep incline. Then he “bucks up” the trunk into logs, which we stack on the side of the road so he can come back later with Hank the tractor. We’ll repurpose the logs as either posts for the garden beds in front of the cottage or firewood.

Last winter, we noticed that a huge 115-foot Douglas Fir tree was leaning over our house in the hollows. The magnificent tree, my favorite Christmas tree mind you, was growing nearly sideways on the hill behind our cottage. The angle was such that nearly seventy percent of its full trunk would crash into the length of our home. If the tree fell, it would kill us.

It rains a lot in Mendocino. The sound of rain lulls me to sleep. Unless you imagine the rain pulling the soil downhill and a tree killing you. The vision prompts the question, are you ready to die? Will you ignore what scares you and live with your head in the sand like an ostrich? These are good questions to ponder in the quiet of the forest.

Joey could barely sleep. He wants to live to be 104. Me? I want a few good decades of peace, prosperity, health, love, and dancing. In time as more trees fell, I realized we would have to “take” the Douglas Fir tree. From my teachings and natural knowing, I would need to ask the tree permission before calling in the menfolk and their chainsaws.

I affectionately named this tree Freddy the Fir. I think of Freddy Mercury and how this tree could be Frederick or Frederica, so it’s androgynous and spicy. Plus, aside from the Mother Tree in a Redwood Fairy Ring, I don’t experience the gender of most trees. I hugged Freddy, and promised that even though we were going to take their life, their spirit would live on and be lovingly turned handcrafted furniture. I let Freddy know about the coming transition. I waited. I wanted to give Freddy time for whatever final business a tree has after living 200-300 years. I asked for permission and forgiveness. I saw the true conscious spirit of Freddy and felt extreme gratitude, and still do!

A couple of weeks ago, Joey came to the hollows with his best friend Billy and his 15-year-old son Wyatt, and Tom, an 80-year-old bowl-legged cowboy who walks and talks like Yosemite Sam to cut down Freddy.  We figured the tree was 80 feet, but it turned out that Freddy was 115-feet tall. What a magnificent life!

When I returned to the hollows on this last visit, Freddy was on the ground. I went to the trunk and placed my hands on the crystal bubbles of sap. I sang and thanked Freddy. What a gift, what a blessing.

Then I got to work collecting Freddy’s needle-covered branches that were now a fire hazard. We clipped the thin branches and made a slash pile to burn. We saved thicker branches to make fences. When Freddy fell, the trunk broke into pieces.

Joey milled a chunk of the trunk that was five-feet long into six slabs, two-inches thick. The rounded top and bottom will be made into stairs for the terraced garden. The middle slabs may become a live edge table or window trim or maybe even the beginning of a new deck. I want to be help in the building but I’m afraid of the chainsaw.

I asked Joey to teach me to operate the chainsaw. However, I have not pushed for lessons. I went to ER when I was fourteen after about ten of us flew out of the truck bed. Banking a corner too fast, the truck got the speed wobbles and flipped. Ten teenagers scattered on the road between Peralta Junior High School and Sears at the Orange Mall. One guy was pinned between the curb and the truck. My friend Melissa Martinez chipped her front tooth off. My knee was bleeding from a tiny cut no bigger than a thumbnail. It felt like the angels, or the ancestors, caught me midflight, but that’s for another story.

I was taken to ER anyway. In the bed across from me, a black-haired Latino screamed in anguish. He gripped his leg from behind the knee. The jeans of his thighs were ripped open and the bloody gash revealed that it had been a chainsaw accident.

The chainsaw takes and creates, providing an interesting metaphor for dealing with power. You wield power with confidence, thorough safety check, focus, and a fair amount of humility for the kick back. Sounds a lot like teh chainsaw and Witchcraft.

There are many trees on these 45 acres where we are blessed to live that have a blue line spraypainted on its trunk by logging companies. We have saved these trees from being forested. When others fall, we look for ways to repurpose the wood, to extend the life of our breathing buddies, the trees. We take daily forest bathing walks to help lower our stress and rediscover an easy cadence.

I have been thinking of how I want to repurpose the Freddy as the Stump. I’m leaning towards a seat, like a throne or just a place to sit and ponder about how good it feels to be in sync with nature.

Nature and Me

I believe I’ve struck a bargain with the birds. This is the second year they built a nest on top of the porch light. A bit of cardboard and the wood deck is saved from their excrement. That’s an easy compromise compared to abandoning the porch altogether when the chicks chirp their hunger with such frenetic energy that as I mother, I understand exactly that offspring is saying. My heart races and I scoot.

In the fall, I placed a Faeries Happen sign on the light, hoping to discourage the birds from building a nest because of the discomfort I figured we caused the birds. My plan worked through spring, until we arrived a few days ago. The baby birds were so tiny in their nest on Saturday. On Monday, we saw two chicks bursting either side of their home, and a couple days later, I notice there were three chicks in the nest. They are very quiet birds until they are hungry and then they are absolutely insistent. I mean, the energy is downright frenetic. Their parents swoop around the deck, but don’t dare deliver the food until we leave our beautiful shaded porch to play in the forest or go inside and close the door.

Sometimes Joey grumbles that I insist we abide the babies’ random schedule, but it’s familiar to me, and I feel sympathy for the parent birds. I also won’t allow him to weed whack the terrace where we building new garden beds and preparing for rows of grapes, until I have harvested the dandelion, which I clearly cannot do until all the bees have had their fill. But he’s the best at transporting seedlings into the earth. His tender, confident touch pulls in the dirt around their tender shoots, creates a well and then waters our plants deeply. We love living in harmony with nature.

While we gone, the rain and fog waters our herbal allies and food. It’s amazing, but the plants flourish, even during our long absences. Then they bloom in greeting when we arrive. The feeling of connection with my garden is transcendental. The rose geranium has become a bush from a sprig. The calendula opens for every single visit. Garlic stalks are over two feet. The artichokes are growing strong, safely protected by deer resistant flowers, chicken wire and flashing CDs. This week we transplanted two kinds of pumpkins and watermelon seedlings. Fingers crossed. We planted many starts too, including strawberries, thyme, basil, oregano, comfrey, and borage. Joey built another garden, fixed the road that got washed away this winter, mowed miles of road, and cleared the fallen trees.

I tend the garden and read many books preparing for a new career as a narrator and some clever videos to promote my next book, A Box of Magick. I’m careful about the hours that I am under the sun because it can be blistering, sweaty hot. The shower has questionable water pressure, more than a dribble, but nothing raucous. This is where I draw the line in homesteading.

So, while the birds fetch, deliver, and consume worms, I am inside with the walkie talkie while Joey goes to the wellhead at the top of the property two miles uphill – at an elevation gain of 400 feet. In order to water the cannabis plants, the previous owners laid ¾-inch pipe to fill water tanks next to three grow operations of thousands of potted cannabis plants.

Joey turns on the well to release water through pipes that run from the top of the property to the bottom, where the little house is located in the hollows. When the water in the water tank, about 100 yards from our house, overflows I alert him through the walkie talkie. It took half an hour to fill the tank and four minutes for it to travel from the top of the property to the bottom of the hollows.

The plan is to double the width of the pipe and set up a second water tank at the halfway point to the house to create more pressure because of gravity.

“We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
― Aldo Leopold

The babies are quiet now. It’s time to go outside and sit on my lovely porch watching butterflies dance fly around golden poppies, bright yellow dandelions and calendulas blossoms that look like the sun itself. The afternoon breeze will rustle the bay leaves. And if the babies get hungry again, as they are wont to be, I will take a walk through the forest.

Within a few days, the biggest of two birds flew away without our notice. The smallest bird stayed in the nest for a full day. The mama bird chirped and called to her chick, but s/he didn’t want to go. I understand. Just wanted a little space, a moment to breath before launching yourself into thin air. Plus, this really is a cozy home in the hollows for generations of birds. Then, I looked up and the baby chick was gone. Time to fly.