An Ice Storm

In the northeast part of the United States, we'll remember the winter of 2011 as a harsh one to have endured. It's March and after a mild, rainy week, I was awakened by a crash outside the house. Things are always creaking and crashing in the mountains, so I didn't get up right away to explore. Instead I stayed under the covers and stared at the icy branches of the birches just outside my picture window. The temperature had dropped to the teens and frozen the rain into an overnight ice storm. It was a gray morning, but those intricate cross-hatched branches were catching light from somewhere beyond the clouds. I contemplated getting my camera to try to capture their beauty, but I've known for a long time that I can either be with a riveting presence or photograph it; I can't have both. As I get older more and more I choose being with the thing, taking it in and sending back...what?...wonder, I suppose.

The tree closest to my bedroom was bent nearly double with the weight of the ice. It's an old tree, old for a birch, its trunk much wider than my arm span. Birches aren't supposed to live too long, but the ones surrounding my house look to be somewhat venerable. They looked old when Al and I moved in a dozen years ago, and despite their fragility, they've held their ground until now. But this harsh winter the ground is covered with broken limbs and trunks. I've lost many trees already and was looking forward to the year's thaw. I'd been hoping that the past few mild days marked the beginning of the change, but change doesn't usually happen in so predictable a linear pattern.

When I went downstairs to make coffee I saw that on the other side of the house, our biggest birch tree had fallen. That was the crash I'd heard. I could barely look at it, my thoughts flipping from mourning its beauty to methods of disposal to relief that it had fallen away from the house and along the edge of the woods. But it was to sadness and loss that my thoughts returned most. I guess I carried some belief in me that since it had made it to old age, it would take on the strength and longevity of the mighty oak. Certainly it was an unexamined belief, buried deep beneath my conscious, rational thoughts, some form of magical thinking.

I brought my coffee back upstairs to drink in bed, all the while looking out at the tree that still stood outside my bedroom window. Bent as it was, it was holding, and the weather report had forecasted a mid-afternoon thaw. I willed that tree to survive until the sun came and released its limbs from their crystal shackles, allowing it to stretch once more towards the sky. I stayed in bed longer than I should have, sending out my good wishes and cheers, pushing away the thought that some inner rot that I couldn't see might get the better of it, wondering if that was what had done in our oldest, strongest birch.