Growing a Forest

When we first acquired our little acreage on the Tay River, there were trees. Of a sort.

Certainly we had several majestic old maples and white oaks and a few dozen white pines that had been planted perhaps twenty years before. The green ash were just starting to show the depredations of the emerald ash borer, and now are down to just a few healthy trees, whose days are numbered. We discovered, one by one, a dozen apple trees, scraggly and unproductive, growing where someone had long ago tossed an apple core.

Most of the woodland had been allowed to go wild over decades and were infested with buckthorn, prickly ash, and massive, ancient wild grape vines, bigger around than your arm, that had long ago tangled themselves around senior trees, pulling them down and strangling them. Much of the area felt like a jungle and even the understory had lost its health.

And so we got down to rehabilitating our woodlands. Just in case you ever decide to tackle prickly ash and buckthorn, you need to know that they fight back. After a day of clearing these wily plants, your arms (long sleeves or not) look like you’ve wrestled a wildcat.

As we cleared out the undesirables, it became obvious that the woodlands needed some regenerative help, and we* began to plant saplings in the gaps – pines, spruce, poplar, oaks, butternuts, walnuts, and moved native saplings such as maple and ironwood from areas of plenty to areas of sparsity. And bit by bit, we’re getting the promise of a lush and diverse forest, the floor covered with trilliums and the other lush flora of our region.

Sometimes when you’re wielding a chainsaw or a set of shears all day, you have a chance to do some thinking about life. And I began to understand that our lives and our hearts and our minds, our relationships, families, and careers have much in common with my little woods.

What they are today, and what we hope for them next year and next decade, are often very different. Relationships and careers, and the state of our hearts, are often tangles of weeds, habits, attitudes, and relationships gone sideways. And their restoration often calls for the same work as rehabilitating a tangled, neglected woodland.

First you need to recognize what you’re dealing with and envision the desirable result you know can be had. You have to be willing to incur many a blister and sore muscle and battle the thorns that fight back.

But as you tear out the tangle of old vines which have drawn the forest down into a dark and twisted dead place, you begin to see the woodlands floor receiving sunlight for the first time in decades. New growth can reach straight up into the light instead of tangling around deadwood and brambles. The more you work at getting rid of the malevolent stuff and replacing it with healthier new growth, the more it begins to take on a joyous life of its own. Darkness may beget darkness, but light begets light.

Relationships and careers don’t just happen. They are as joyous and healthy as you make them, or as dank and miserable as you let them be. They are, after all, complex ecosystems that require careful attention and loving care.

None of these things happen overnight, but as we only pass through life once, may we strive to make our relationships and careers and woodlands places of sunlight and beauty.

* By “we”, I mean the whole clan, grandkids and all, who showed up with energy and enthusiasm and left with blisters and aching muscles and the knowledge that they had done something really, really worthwhile.