Today I am sharing an excerpt from an essay I have been thinking about and writing for two or three months. I imagine this essay will eventually live alongside some others I am working on, but it isn’t clear yet. Some days, I feel like I am writing a full essay collection and other days I feel like I just need to get the words out. I will continue writing and see where it leads.
For now, here is a glimpse into what I am working on.
The Cedar
In late March, I woke up early for the 3.5-hour drive to my hometown for the funeral of a woman I had known my whole life. Edith, or Eshie as my older brother named her when he could barely talk, used to care for my brothers and me, occasionally stepping into a grandparent role when my own grandparents were too far away to do so.
Eshie was ninety-nine when she died and had lived to meet twenty-five of her great-GREAT-grandchildren. When I was born, she lived on the same road we did, moving into town just a few miles away at some point before I can remember. She stayed with my older brother and me the night of my second birthday when my mom went into labor with my younger brother. Eshie had attended my small birthday party earlier that day, and my Grandma was there too. My Grandma lived over an hour away and had already made the long drive home when my parents were leaving for the hospital, so it was Edith who returned to care for us.
A few days after Eshie's funeral, a neighbor shared a photograph from the Treat Farm trail near my house in Empire. The landmark cedar tree at the end was gone. It had fallen from its perch on the dune's edge sometime recently, landing halfway down. Something about this felt unmooring, especially as it happened in the same week as the death of a prominent matriarch in my life.
Somehow, hiking the Treat Farm had become a container for loss and grief, a direction to head in moments that felt directionless. The day Tim's mom died, just months after I had met her, Tim and I hiked the trail together mostly in silence. We had a dog at the time who needed walking, and we were in shock that she was gone. We walked to the end of the trail next to the cedar tree, and I remember feeling as though her presence was still lingering somewhere with us in that great expanse where the lake spreads before, pressing into the sky.
Two months before the tree fell, we were on the hike as Tim's Grandmother died. She had suffered a stroke a few days earlier, and she kept breathing until everyone had the opportunity to say goodbye. With our children and my parents this time, we stood again next to the cedar tree, my son touching it with his fingers as he looked over the dune to the lake below. That was the last time we did the hike while the tree stood. When we returned home, Tim's dad called to tell him Grandma Norma was gone.
On a Sunday morning in April, we finally made it to the Treat Farm to see where the cedar tree fell. It was an unremarkable day in that no one had died, and the sky was blue and cloudless. Our son, four-and-a-half, told us he didn't have the energy to do the full hike, so we pushed him on the path through the woods in the stroller his baby sister typically rides in while she sat in a carrier strapped to my chest.
The trail winds through the woods for a half-mile or so before opening into the old homestead site that gives the trail its name. The Treat Farmhouse still stands on a hill overlooking the barn and outbuildings, with a meadow stretching beyond. We parked the stroller by the barn, told our son he could walk the last stretch of the trail, through the meadow and around the dune to the edge of the bluff. He and Tim played hide-and-seek to keep us moving, though hiding locations were limited in the big open field.
Before the trail ends, it re-enters the woods for a few hundred feet, woods filled with pine and cedar trees. The trees go almost to the bluff's edge, where the sand dune falls straight into Lake Michigan three hundred feet below.
When we reached the end of the trail that day, we were shocked to see how much of the bluff had eroded. Not only was the cedar tree missing, but a large chunk of the ground we used to stand on was also gone. We looked over the edge and spotted the cedar tree halfway down the dune, its roots having grabbed the bluff's edge like a fist, pulling the ground down with the tree.
We stood in awe, reminding our son to stand back. Clearly, the bluff was unstable. Tim mentioned that at some point, the trail will likely end in the last stretch of woods. What is now a clearing will fall down the dune eventually, and many of the trees we consider far from the edge will likely disappear with the ground beneath them.
That we could visit this place while the cedar stood–stark and alone–was something of a gift. That we could walk this trail and press our hands to the cedar tree was not an entitlement, but an offering. Who knows how much longer we will stand in this clearing.
Our house has a Japanese weeping cherry tree in front of it, and each year in early May, the blossoms begin to open.
Last year, when my daughter was a month old, I photographed her in front of the tree, and on Mother's Day, my husband took photos of me with both children, surrounded by the tree’s pink haze. I imagined last year that this would be a yearly tradition, that the kids and I would continue to take pictures in front of the tree as it blossoms each May. But the tree is 20 or 30 years old, likely nearing the end of its life. Even what we use to mark the passage of time fades eventually, and we are left to find new markers.
The tree began to blossom this week, and a few nights after the first blossoms opened, the forecast threatened temperatures below freezing. After the kids were in bed that night, I asked Tim if I should somehow cover the tree, knowing as I asked that I didn't have anything big enough for that. All there was to do was wait and worry. What if the frost kills the blossoms? Somehow they survived, and now the tree is almost fully blooming, a week earlier than last year. It’s possible the tree will drop its blossoms before Mother’s Day this year, littering the ground with pink confetti.
We brought home two red oak saplings from the library to plant in our yard on Earth Day. They are each about eight inches tall, and I am supposed to imagine how they might impact our yard at fifty feet tall. For the whole week, my son and I have walked circles around our house, counting the steps between possible planting sites and the trees nearby, looking up at the power lines to make sure some imagined canopy won't reach out and shock itself.
My son carried orange flags meant for marking the driveway in the winter around the yard, sticking them in the ground at random. "What about here?" he asks, and I explain that it is too close to the house or will block the sunlight from the garden we hope to plant. He looks confused, trying to picture the small twig in my hand as a giant tree, trying to imagine the dirt hole where I have dug out the grass as a garden.
Swim Club
Weather permitting, I am swimming at Empire Beach at 10am tomorrow. There may be some folks going in the afternoon if that is better for your schedule; feel free to leave a comment if you want to join! This will be the last organized cold swim of the season.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Cheers,
Mae