Fallen Trees

I called it my African tree, although it had reached maturity long before I took possession of the property on which it stood. “Look at it,” I said to my wife as we sat on our back patio. “It’s out of Africa and out of place and so alone. It looks like one of those trees I knew from my summer in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Africa when I was a kid.”

And it did. The gnarled truck with its greenish yellow bark culminated in an umbrella shaped crown, like the trees you might see on the African savannah or pictured on the book cover of Out of Africa or The Poisonwood Bible.

Some evenings as Lori and I would gaze beyond the African tree to the orange backdrop the sunset’s glow  had painted, I would reminisce about that summer so many years ago in Africa:  how I would try to keep up with Dr. Giles Fort as he, in his khaki shirt and pants and pith helmet, would hustle to make his hospital rounds; the early morning sight and smell of smoke rising in the villages; the distant beat of African drums that would put me to sleep late into the night; the elephants which were still able to roam with some degree of freedom back then; my new found African friends singing, clapping, dancing around their campfires.   

The tree invited me back to a place and time that was no more but still was here and now, soothing my soul after the grind of another work day.

I liked that the tree was quite unlike any others in our backyard. My African tree was its own creation, unique, uncommon, individual.

Then I noticed one day my African tree had lost a limb. It was quite old, I guessed. Then it lost another.  One day I looked out and saw only open sky where my African tree had been. 

“What’s happened to my African tree?” I shouted to Lori as I rushed down to the edge of our property to investigate.

Maybe it was the strong wind, or perhaps lightening. But the tree was down.

My African tree: It was no more.

I missed my African tree.

What do you do with a fallen tree?

I researched it.  I could hollow out the trunk and use it as planter; I could make a tree trunk bench or log stool; I could even drill a hole in it and make a vase. Or I could cut up the wood and burn it.

But none of these ideas or similar ones appealed to me. I’m not crafty, and I don’t need to burn wood. Besides, much of the tree’s trunk was decaying.

So I let the tree lie there, resting in peace, like a grave marker for the deceased.

Somewhere in the cold of winter, the African tree faded from my memory.

Then spring came.

I was showing my twenty-two month old grandson what I had planted in my garden. And he was most engaged, or so it seemed to me. Then quite suddenly we were interrupted by something.

Even though he was clutching my hand, Eli almost tripped over the African tree’s trunk.

I looked down on it. The tree seemed to be pleading, “Hey, don’t you remember me?”

I was sorry for my African tree.

So I explained to Eli how my African tree was once special to me because of its uniqueness and the memories it prompted.

Eli studied the trunk as he gnawed on his pacifier.

So holding him in my lap, I sat down on my tree, and we talked some more.

“Let’s thank the Lord for what we can see of our beautiful Kentucky from this place, here on this tree trunk,” I said.

Eli nodded and declared, “Amen.” (It’s one of the first words I taught him.)

Now the two of us return quite regularly to our African tree trunk to sit and talk about nothing in particular.

My fallen African tree is the perfect perch for Eli and me to sit and ponder, to stop and stare at the open field below. It’s like one of those scenic rest stops you might chance upon as you travel a road to someplace else.

Only we aren’t going anywhere; we’re planted here at home, home in Kentucky.

And that’s okay, because from that tree, I feel the past as I peer all the way from Kentucky to Africa and back to the present moment.

Even as I hold the future in my lap.