My Crooked Little Pine Tree

Soon after we moved to our little corner of paradise on the Tay River, just outside Perth (Canada, not Scotland!), we set to work rehabilitating our woodlands.

After decades of neglect, the former woods, orchards, and meadows had been overrun by invasive buckthorn, prickly ash, wild juniper, and wild grapevines. While each of these species has a place in the scheme of things, it’s not when they are running in gangs choking out the native forest.

To this point I’ve discovered and begun the slow process of rehabilitating dozens of miscellaneous desirables, including eleven beaten-up apple trees which had been pulled down and choked by vines and buckthorn. Little by little, with pruning and shaping, these old trees are taking advantage of root systems which are decades old and just waiting for sunlight and freedom.

But there’s one little pine tree, easily visible from the table where I do much of my writing, which is my favourite. I discovered him fighting for life under a pile of old boards and scrap lumber which, judging from wood rot and rusty nails, had been there at least a decade.

As we worked our way toward the bottom of the scrap pile, I noticed a few sprigs of bright green poking through cracks near one end. It was my little white pine, still alive after years of crushing weight. After the last boards were lifted away, there it lay– about a metre of twisted, tangled trunk and limbs groping every which way to find the sun through whatever crevice they could.

Over the course of the summer I braced him up, a bit at a time, to the vertical. Having grown horizontally for most or all of his life, new growth did not always know which way was up, and sprouted in odd directions. Nevertheless, in his newfound freedom, the little evergreen flourished rapidly, just not looking quite like all the other pines in the woods.

The next year I began to bind the weak, spindly trunk to a strong upright stake, little by little taping him in gently but firmly to remove the wildest of the twists and curves. At the same time, as new growth began to fill in, I was able to snip off the craziest old branches. Little by little, my little tree began to take the general shape of an honest to goodness Lanark County white pine.

While he may never attain the status of “majestic”, he has pretty well learned to stand tall on his own, and to grow out so as to look like a real pine. He’s now taller than I, with growth in all the proper places. Of all the rehabs, he really is my favourite.

But the truth is that most of the kinks and wrinkles from his days under the wood pile will remain for life, even if mostly tamed. He will never have the unerringly perfect trunk of his siblings. His beauty will be unique.

We’re all a bit like that, aren’t we? Very few of us have got this far in life without some trauma, in many cases, quite a bit. Some of us even continue to suffer post-trauma stress, sometimes managed, sometimes not.

Like my little tree, we’ve never given up hope, never stopped searching for the sunlight. But even after the trash has been lifted off us, the effects remain. As humans we are much more capable of self-help than was my little pine, but only so far. Sometimes we need some outside help to remove the garbage and get us off the ground and standing straight.

Long after I’m gone, my tree will stand thirty metres or more, fragrant and rustling in the breeze. And part of his beauty and character will be odd bends in his trunk, testament to a hard beginning. For each of us, no matter the back story, there is a potential for greatness.