Competing Hypnotizability Scales (Short Story) {Part III}
September 28, 2012
Mechanically Inclined? Definitely Not
October 12, 2012
The following essay was published in the local newspaper last Thursday. A day after it made the paper, I got all sorts of positive feedback from friends here in Silverton. Always a great thing for boosting one’s ego. Enjoy!!
Word Count: 767
Hurry Up
And Get Big
A good friend of mine jokingly gives me the nickname of “Arbor Dave”. He’s definitely justified in referring to me in this manner. To say I’m obsessed with planting and growing trees all over the place in our little valley is a gross understatement. Like saying that couch potatoes look forward to ripping open that bag of chips they just bought.
Now that we’re rushing headlong into the fall off-season around here, its as good a time as any to do an assessment of how the tree planting went this past summer. I’ve been growing and nurturing trees for over twenty-five years here in Silverton and the results of my, and other people’s labors are starting to come to fruition. You see more and more foliage popping up all over the place in our little valley.
Troubles is since we live at a fairly high altitude and have such a short growing season, plants take what seems like an inordinately long time to mature around here. Growing anything, let alone something that takes such a long-term commitment like a tree seems like you’ve been turned into a chipmunk stuck on a perpetual motion machine. You know what I’m talking about. One of those spinney thinga-ma-jigs where the animal runs forward, but doesn’t move. No matter how hard the rodent sprints or the amount of effort it puts into moving the machine, nothing changes. In this case, you keep adding water to the base of the seedling, feeding it with various types of fertilizers every summer, and try constantly to baby it year in and year out, but nothing seems to grow.
Rather than the tree actually increasing in both girth and size, it looks like the plant is shrinking? How is this possible? More to the point, is it numerically probable for something to slow down and disappear? Despite the fact that you’ve done everything within your power to make it move forward? Apparently so.
Then on top of that, no matter what you try to do over the course of summer then into fall, the tree dies. You carefully planted it way back in April only to see it slowly but surely wither on you. Tough looking at the plant day in and day out and it almost feels like you’re participating in the torture phase of the operation.
Despite all these roadblocks I can categorically say it’s been a very successful growth season. All these years of planting and caring for trees has taught me a lot. The first few months its in the ground you water the plant like its a monsoon season on steroids. Depending upon where it’s been plopped into the ground, you figure out a way to provide some shade for the young seedling. In a valiant attempt to fight our intense high altitude sun. Fertilize the tree throughout the summer. Basically did whatever I could to increase survival percentages.
So why do all this? Because I love trees. They look good as they slowly become established. The environment where they’ve been planted has a better appearance to it. Once the tree gets bigger it provides shade. Granted it takes time around here, but looking at all those trees I helped to plant on the property where I grew up tells me they do eventually get big.
The naysayers still persist. Some of them continue to ask me why I waste my time planting and taking care of trees only to have them die on me six months down the road. To all those doubters I’ll continue to defy expectations by pushing forward. For every tree that dies, I’ll plant two or three more in its place the following spring.
Mother nature is on my side too. Recently I saw a photograph of Anvil Mountain as it looked thirty years ago. The Aspen groves on the top of the mountain were just barely peeking their way down the slope. Here we are three decades later and the Aspen groves have increased in size and moved further down the flanks of the mountain.
This is the time of the year when you can really see it happening. The change in colors points this out whenever you look up the slope. Eventually the majority of the mountain will be covered in trees.
May take another thirty years, but it’ll occur. Patience is a virtue. At least that’s what I keep telling myself with this whole writing odyssey of mine. Rejection rates that are reminiscent to paddling upstream in a chicken wire canoe have taught me that.
