The Wisconsin cottage where I have spent every summer of my life was designed over ninety years ago by my maternal great-aunts Elinore and Lila. The mossy-sided cottage has the original low sinks requested by the tiny sisters, a creaky dark staircase and, best of all, no window coverings. Due to the density of the trees and the absence of close neighbors there is no need. I have never successfully thought of a design element that trumps the desirability of being able to look out of any room and instantly connect with the breezy trees tangling the view beyond. When I sleep in an upstairs bedroom during a rainstorm the upper branches and leaves of the birch wildly swash across the glass. The drippy shadows on a clear night are better than any ghost story for a vivid awareness of the creepy depths of my mind. In these moments the natural world enveloped the cottage as a part of itself with lucky me as the conduit. The panoramic acres of pine and birch seamlessly unite with the structure but through the summers of my life I have the woods alone to thank for kick starting the world of my imagination.
The cornerstone for my daydream mind was established when I was a kid visiting the Wisconsin woods from my home in southern Arizona. It is possible that the encompassing wooded thicket captivated me since it was so different from the pink light of the unrestrained Sonoran desert. The sheer “otherness” is undeniable. I found myself unaccompanied in the woods, and this is a rarity for any kid used to the monitoring of parents, teachers and babysitters. The woods—the setting for endless scary movies and fairytales—were my safest haven of peace and freedom. My company within the trees was a complete world that housed trolls and wood sprites huddled around the ferny and mushroomed ground. Through an easy relaxation of my mind I could be anything: a fast moving grouse, a mangling dinosaur, a floating monster. I could also be nothing. Many an invisible afternoon was spent in the timeless staged backdrop made just for me at that quiet moment. Pretending was easy around a seemingly endless pack of crisply limbed, and flippy leaved, birch trees. The overlapping of decades of interwoven layers of trees are so thick that the sunbeams cannot be tracked for a clear estimate of the time of day. That is an undeniable bonus to an imagination since it causes hourly time, as a thing, to all but disappear.
From a practical sense the abundant poison ivy make the woods a difficult spot to relax in but I was so exacting as a child I was never afflicted. Every summer I do enjoy a brief and careful walk to take a look around. The ground is soft and loamy and it smells so richly of rotting wood and the rounded frozen explosions of wet mushrooms. Slow filly ferns abound with their shocking phosphorus green tops and their precisely divided black pod undersides. The regal ferns, so thickly stable, move throughout the woods undaunted by landscapers or pathways. To walk past a fern outcropping is to feel the living cling of their floppy pointed tips against your legs. They stay right with you until the fractioned moment when they splash right back to their standing lone permanence. My dream would be to live undetectable by the deer and animals that live in the woods so I appreciate a fern’s ability to easily conceal a group of fawns in such a way that a tree never could. Years ago I felt an infinite tenderness for a deer moving through a jumbled grove of ferns because it had sustained a serious injury causing it to walk on three legs. Observable at least twice a day slowly crossing past the dining room window my mother named her “Vivian Stumbles.” I felt too fragile and fearful about this deer and I decided to just stay out of her woods for the rest of the summer. The absurd but comforting hope was that this creature would have a trouble free life.
The cottage came to my segment of the extended family when my mother purchased it from my senile Grandfather in the late 1970’s. She has been solely responsible for it ever since. And some form of responsibility accompanies anything that can be owned. Last summer my mother had to call Jim, the quite elderly local tree doctor. Jim is also the regional constable. Three years ago he decided not to run again for the position he has held for fifty years, but his name was written in anyway. It seems he will have the post for the rest of his life. Jim is a very polite and serious man. Taking a look around last July, Jim gently said that 40 dead birch trees had to be removed. If a 70 footer fell it could do damage to power lines. No question. Had to be done. He walked my mother through the property and they talked at the base of each and every birch tree as he presented his case for cutting it down. That process, filled with small town gossip and memories from two lifetimes, took four hours.
I am not wholly innocent of what happens to trees.
There is a wonderful low outdoor stone fire pit where generations have stared at the blazing logs they threw on the pile. The cottage has a fireplace. The cottage is made of wood. At first I breezily tossed off the tree removal development because it is reasonable that some maintenance will take place with so many trees. After the work was done the woods didn’t look all that different. But I wouldn’t have had to process or face any of this except for the appearance of the birch in their new form. The trees were removed from their former standing position but they were still there. Jim’s team did a glorious job of stacking the trees into eyelevel walls between healthy trees. People rarely drive on our dead end road, but I could hear vehicles slowing down just to try and look at the installation piece made up by the logs snaking throughout the acreage. Surely the people interested in the stacks were year round residents looking at several winters’ worth of fireplace fuel with excitement, greed and a bit of contempt for the “summer people.”
We were logger barons.
Part of the deal was that Jim would give a discount for the expensive undertaking if he could take multiple truckloads of logs. The other workers got a similar payday. My mother, the official owner of the chopped wood, was oddly hesitant to make further arrangements. I pushed her to instill a lifetime of goodwill by offering the cut logs for no charge to the neighboring families. And I really wanted, and now needed, the untouched woods of my childhood to come back. I couldn’t activate a tranquil flexibility on this issue. My mind was stalled. But my faithful woods allow me to work on my stagnation. They will change, nature’s inevitable fact, but whatever form they take I plan on never missing out.
I don’t own my woods but they are the thing that most belongs to me.
