December 5, 2000

The tree surgeons have been at work all around Fillmore Garden Apartments,
taking out the trees that look unable to stay up for another winter. I
noticed that they seemed particularly to be removing the old sycamores.
Many of the oak and sycamore trees here were saplings when the place was
built 58 years ago, and all the trees they cut down were hollow inside. 

Every day for the past week, I would return home and see that the old
sycamore outside my kitchen window was still there. I had wondered in prior
years that they had not cut it down, but it seemed that as long as it was
still alive, they left it there. But not today. Tonight as I walked through
the archways from the courtyard into the area outside my building, I saw a
space in the sky and the pile of logs on the ground, wrapped with orange
tape like a murder scene. 

I was here the night that sycamore tree was struck by lighting during one
of the worst storms I can remember. I was in the kitchen when FLASH BOOM I
knew something nearby had been hit. The next day the tree showed a split
along the lightning's path. Half of it fell off and died, but the rest hung
on for another 12 years. Birds nested in holes in its trunk. Every spring,
a few branches would be in leaf as if to symbolize that annual renewal, a
tree which, however old, is still partly young as long as it lives. A
couple of years ago the maintenance crew lopped off some more branches, but
they seemed disposed to let the tree live as many more years as possible. 

We've lost a lot of old trees here at Fillmore. Back by my garage, a huge
oak, which the local botanical society had labeled as a particularly fine
example, was removed a few years ago. It used to shade my garage and a
large area of the parking lot. Last year, another old oak was cut down on
one of the principal walkways. This year, all the old sycamores are going.
I had hoped that mine would be spared, as it appeared that even if it fell,
it was no longer tall enough to hit the building. 

There are still a lot of fine old trees left, many big oaks (which is why
we have a large squirrel population, indeed some of the largest squirrels
I've ever seen), and a lot of dogwoods (despite a blight that I read would
kill them all within a few years). And there have been new trees planted to
replace the old. The owners, who built this place on their family farm in
1942, still plan for the long term. 

Two flowering Japanese cherry trees, which were just spindly little
saplings when I moved here in 1987, now shade most of the lawn (see
picture). In every season, it gives me joy to look at them. When they are
in full bloom, I know it time to go look at the ones at the Tidal Basin.
Old trees die, but new ones grow up. 

It was very cold tonight, with a bitter wind blowing. I hastily looked
through the pile of sycamore wood, looking for a piece to save, perhaps to
make something of. Most of the pieces were too large to carry, but I found
one, a wedge that might even be the piece cut out to make the tree fall. I
took it inside and put it on the bathroom radiator to dry out. Don't know
how I'll use it. Tomorrow morning I'll look at the tree's remains in
daylight, and maybe salvage a more characteristic piece, one with the
distinctive bare-wood appearance typical of sycamores. On the top (third)
floor here with an old-style centrally controlled heating system, I open
windows to let in cool air and keep it from becoming too warm. Tonight the
smell of sycamore sap blows in through my open kitchen window and permeates
the apartment like the scent of fresh blood. 

--DW