Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - 6

FROM THE EDITOR

OLD MAN, OLD TREE

The Day the Tulip Poplar
Came Down
We were too late in giving the tree the respect and
attention my father had modeled so well.
By KURT RHEINHEIMER

M

y father, on extended visits
during his later years (he died
in early 2015 at age 98), was
given to enjoying the same
simple pleasures that he'd savored all his life.
Not the least of which was
time with trees. Where earlier in his life he
had hiked through the forest at a pace that
would allow him to stop, identify and treasure the oaks and maples, the hemlocks and
Virginia pines-even the chestnuts far back
in his long life-in his last years he would
settle himself on our screened back porch to
follow the cycles of one particular tree.
The tulip poplar next to the garage provided initial delight as it began to leaf out
in spring. Even more sublime to him were
those big yellow blossoms, which he appreciated both for their beauty and for their tie
to his days as a beekeeper who won countless ribbons at county and state fairs for his
honey. The tulip poplar was one source of
nectar for the occupants of the 40 or so hives
he kept for many years.
Into the spring air and onto that open, beautiful
porch that he enjoyed as if his daughter-in-law had created it just for him, he would take his morning coffee,
his modest lunch or his evening wine and sit quietly
sometimes for more than an hour, drinking in the bounty and blessings of the big poplar that he appreciated to
a degree that made it seem that it too had been placed
there just for him. His doting on the tree was not a product of age or a failing mind; it was in fact no different
from the perspective at any stage of life for an eccentric,
nature-loving person.

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Over the years since he left us, Gail and I have paid
more attention to that tree-both in his honor and in our
own growing admiration for its high-arching shade onto
the house from the summer sun.
But it was our failing that as we picked up occasional
pieces of bark after a thunderstorm or a windy day, we did
not better inspect our tree, that we did not go stand next
to it and look up at its trunk and branches and leaves. No,
we learned to do that over the recent weeks standing next
to four different arborists who pointed here and there,
who talked about the big wound and if lightning might
have caused it, who used words like callous and canker
as they gently allowed us to learn about our tree and to
decide its fate.
One of the four arborists said there could be some
trimming and thinning to better allow the wind to pass
through the upper limbs of the weakened tree, but he
talked in terms of a few years. And the other three were
gently adamant-the wound was too big and the risk of
fall too great to let the tree stand any longer.
In the end, the big poplar, a fixture in our backyard for
all of our nearly 30 years in the home it shaded, and a survior of the 2012 derecho that had taken out an oak not 50
feet from it-in the end the big poplar got strapped and
roped up as young men as lithe and strong as a healthy
tree at mid-life made their way up it and began to cut
away at its limbs and lower them gently into the yard.
We'll plant a new tree this fall-likely a tulip poplar-
and begin again the cycle that will give some future occupants of the house the chance to think about its shade
and beauty.
But much as there will never be another like the old
man who admired the tree so deeply, Gail and I will never again get the chance to appreciate-even too late as
we did with this one-another tree so grand, so close, so
precious.
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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019

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