REQUIEM FOR A BIRCH TREE!
Mother Nature has her own ways! Sometimes she is a sight to behold, other times she can be a real beast. Country living means an opportunity to interact with the environment in many ways. Some are pleasant to the senses. Others, clearly are not!
We have had a Birch Tree that has graced our place for many decades. In fairness, she had close company of other birches as well. She was always a pleasure to watch. In springtime, she would break out with the most beautiful leaf displays.... And the morning sun always seemed to bring out the best in colors and contrasts....
In the fall she would put on the most gorgeous colors of that season, and if we did not get any freak, cold storms, the intense colors would last and last..... Each year the tree grew in size and scope. It seemed the colors just got better and better with the passing of time... As it grew, it became more and more spindly with its crown higher and higher until the tree measured almost 120 feet....
But....such grand and glorious things were not to last! There comes time in every trees life when it, too, must fall... and she did, with a resounding crash that sounded like a bomb going off as it hit the ground. It was the end of the line for Old Lady Birch!
The storm that finally took her out was a freak one that originated in the Prairie Provinces of Canada, coming in with a late August blast that changed the entire makeup of the area. It is more usual that such storms occur in the winter when trees are not so likely to be destroyed. In summer, with all the heavy foliage, trees are truly vulnerable. She wasn't the only tree to go. As the intense down-canyon winds of 70 to 100 MPH continued relentlessly, trees bent like matchsticks....going, going...and gone!
They fell like dominoes, blocking roads, taking out many a fence, sheds and even slitting the covering on greenhouses. In short, it made a mess......
It was dangerous to be out and about as debris was flying everywhere, and snapping branches and trees were a threat to life and limb. Even houses were not spared, as windows oscillated, woodwork groaned and siding was damaged.
In some places, entire groves disappeared in the murderous winds.....
An examination of the ground around the Birch Tree after it was all over, makes it obvious why she went down. She was too tall, too heavy with foliage, and the root-wad, while some twenty feet in diameter, sat on a bed of rocks! The bed made it tougher to anchor the heavy frame as the years went by! The Old Lady is just a memory now. She may make some firewood or a bonfire at some point, but the pictures tell the story of the life-cycle of a Grand Olde Dame!
Photographs and Story
by
Harald Hesstvedt Scharnhorst
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