The Last Apple Tree

Lamenting the loss of something that's still here.

There’s an old apple tree in the wet meadow just south of our house. An ancient apple tree. It’ll topple over one day, and I’ll be able to know more exactly how old it is. But truthfully, it doesn’t matter. It’s older than me. It’s older than the peeling white barn whose builders etched their initials into a left-over piece of siding up in the loft and dated it 1853. The tree’s been here.

Given its height, and gnarls, and D.B.H (diameter at breast height), it feels as original to this landscape as the cottage we live in. Maybe a year older, maybe a year younger. I imagine it depends what that first winter was like, and how much extra time they had to plant a tree.

The first time I saw it was on Zillow. Eve and I were months into a search – a casual search, if anyone was asking – and we were still in that stage of careless excitement. None of the panic, or worry that comes from too many offers and no luck. We sent links back and forth, and I sifted through the listings not by quality of house, but by the size of the biggest tree. Most of what popped up was new subdivisions, cut out of a quilt of forest. Leggy young pines, compacted lawns to hide the new construction. The skill of photographer matters, surely, but nothing could have made this behemoth of an apple tree look any less impressive on my screen.

The tree is covered in a perfect grid of small holes, circling their way up the tree’s trunk, as if someone brought out a ladder one afternoon and sprayed the tree with a nail gun. Every hole is identical in size, and spaced perfectly from one to the next.

It was one of the first things I noticed, after we moved in. It’s a mesmerizing pattern that you can’t help but to trace up and down the trunk.

I came to learn it’s the masterpiece of a downy woodpecker. Painting the bark in a precise chaos of dots. In a way that would take me ten times as long with a ruler and a drill.

Most mornings I hear these red-headed hammers. Sometimes across the street, up above the power lines in a few old White Pines, or on the side of the old barn. Wood is wood. But most often I see them out the window, working their way around the apple tree. They know death and decay, and they know well before we do.

I’ve only known this tree for a year, but it’s the focal point of our landscape. I find myself looking at it all the time. When I get out of the car and walk the stony steps to the front door; when I’m getting out of the shower and see through the windows down the hall. It’s always right there.

It doesn’t fruit anymore. It still has the energy to put out buds every spring, and turn them into leaves each summer, but it’s obvious there’s not much energy left in the tank for fruit. Alive, and beautiful. But giving up gracefully.

Our woodpecker is drawn to decay. Dying wood means softer wood, and an easier time digging for food. The older and weaker a tree gets, the more insects find their way into the degraded bark. Then the cycle speeds up. Insects attract birds, birds create more habitat for living things foreign to the tree. And so on. Spiraling down, like the Woodpecker’s hammer holes, for the remainder of its time standing.

---

The year before we moved here, a big limb was cut from the tree. The arborist had told the last owners it was a weak link in the chain, and the tree would be happier without it. Rotting, and starting to spread. I only ever saw it as a neatly stacked pile of firewood behind the garage. Unsplit, but cut into eighteen inch logs. No different than the other stacks of wood from the guy down the street who sells split, seasoned oak. Aside from the holes.

If these hammer holes, at first only one, or two, and now everywhere, like chicken pox, were eyes, they would have seen a young shipbuilder planting apple whips. They would have seen early settlers tending sheep, and cutting hay, and building additions onto the small white cottage as families grew. And then they would have seen a chain saw, and a tractor, tidying up the trees shortcomings.

The tree has been food, shelter, and a liability.

At one point, it was a canopy over a lot more of this meadow, with thick, long limbs arching out like a fountain on every side. Now it looks more like a Dr. Seuss caricature, like what a kid would draw from memory. Tall and branchless until the very top.

---

When Owen’s upset about something, I pick him up and we go to the kitchen window together. From the first floor, looking south, the apple tree is a flag in an ocean of grass. It’s the first thing your eye goes to as you peer outside, and without fail he’s calm again. He can’t put together a sentence yet, but he’s created an ecosystem of words and sounds related to this tree. We parrot each other’s words to calm down in the kitchen. “tree”, “tree”. “bird”, “bird”. “tweet tweet”. Maybe he’ll go back to screaming when I put him down and he can’t see out the window anymore, but that apple has saved me a few times from toddler meltdown.

I’ve gone back and forth on starting anew. Am I honoring the tree, the anchor of our home, by planting whips around its base for the next generation when this Apple finally falls? Or does that make me no better than the chain saw, diluting and diminishing the energy this tree holds on our land?

I think about the land the first family had to clear here, before planting this tree, and building a house. The sweat, and muscle, and hope.

---

The hole that’s left after losing a limb has calloused over and become habitat. A robin is laying her eggs in there this spring – Easter blue shells lighting up the dark, rotted cave of apple wood. I’ve only known this tree a year, but I’ve known it forever.

---

I’m not sure how to mourn something that’s still here. But I feel I need to. It’s a slow timescale, the opposite of dog years, but when the day comes to bring back the chain saw, it will be too late to mourn. New life will already be well on its way by then, and the birds will have moved on.

The birds are mourning and celebrating now. They know what’s happening. So just as they whistle and peek around its aging bark this morning as I look out the kitchen window, I should too. I want Owen to remember this titan that lived in our meadow when he was young. And for us to be able to plant the next one together, talking about all the birds we know.