“HONEY,” SHE SAID. “I want to see if that tree will work over here.” We had bought a new house at the end of a road all the way out in the far north woods. But she said there wasn’t enough greenery up front to block out intrusive neighborly eyes. Her solution was to uproot a tree from another property and replant it on our own. You can imagine how much I grumbled doing this. It was one thing for someone to tell you to replant a tree, it was another thing to do it, even knowing that its position might not be satisfactory and that I might have to do it again.
Instead, I dug a hole and held the tree in place while she went out and examined it from different angles. The tree, an Estonian pine, was as tall as a Manhattan skyscraper. It just went up and up into the clouds, and it was very hard to keep erect. It would tilt from one side to another, its trunk was heavy, and, in a moment of distraction, I let the pine slip and watched it with some horror crash into the corrugated metal roof of a nearby house. Its sole inhabitant, an old woman with white hair held back in a headscarf, came out and surveyed the damage.
The old gray granny whistled loudly.
With enough strength, I was able to position the tree in the hole again, holding it aloft through sheer exertion so the lady of the house could at last decide if this was a suitable location. But by this time, the lady of the house had disappeared to somewhere to inquire about acquiring some rhododendrons. The tree, frustrated by the whole scene, wilted at this moment, drooping over like an unhappy flower. “There there,” I told the pine tree. “No need to get upset.” It was no use, in a flash the tree removed itself from my hands and ran quickly away.
Into the woods, I assume.
When the lady of the house returned she asked about the tree. “What kind of man loses a pine tree?” she scolded me. “Only you could lose a whole pine!” I told her that the pine tree was upset. It had been waiting to be replanted all day. “Very well then,” she said. Our daughters gathered around her and she went to the barrel sauna, immersing herself in its bubbling waters. Then, pounding upon the surface of the waters, she began to chant. “I know how to retrieve lost trees!” she said. The children watched their mother with some alarm. But soon enough the tree came out of its hiding place in the woods. Begrudgingly, meekly, sheepishly. Arborescently.
north! 