MacGougan at Large

Notes on My Dangerous Neighborhood- 5

Tree Branches

I live on the edge of woods. Our yard might as well be an arboretum. I keep wanting to explore the feasibility of putting solar panels on our roof, and the solar companies keep telling me that this would be a good plan so long as we’re willing to cut down about forty trees. The moss on our roof should probably have given me a clue.

The neighborhood is sometimes referred to as “leafy”, but this is an understatement. In the fall, we are inundated with leaves. Not just piles of leaves here and there, but a high tide of leaves everywhere that we wade through, making a noise like running in corduroy. When somebody invents a way to refine fallen leaves into crude oil, my neighborhood will be Saudi Arabia.

For the other three seasons of the year, the trees shed branches rather than leaves. On any given day, I can go out into the yard and spend an hour collecting sticks that have accumulated since the day before. They range in size from twigs to two-by-fours. 

Maybe once a month, I come across a serious stick - not a twig - that has fallen straight down with such force that it has impaled itself a foot or more into the ground. Such sticks are known in these parts as “widowmakers” - although they could just as likely create a widower.  

What do I do when I see such a thing? 

• I pause for a moment to acknowledge my gratitude that neither I nor a loved one nor anyone else was in the path of the stick when it fell; 

• I look up to make sure there aren’t any similar sticks contemplating a copy-cat dive;

• I make peace with the fact that we live in the Forest of Damocles; and

• I grab the stick with both hands and pull it up out of the earth, imagining myself pulling Excalibur from the stone.