‘Requiem for a Hope’: Honoring the spruce and other old trees


By Ron Weber | October 22, 2024

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  • Blue Spruce in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. (Courtesy of Thomas Quince/Flickr)

Blue Spruce in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. (Courtesy of Thomas Quince/Flickr)

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Most of us wouldn’t think twice about cutting down an old evergreen that has grown more brown than green. But for writer and forester Ron Weber, the bark of one old blue spruce holds more than just the life of a tree.

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Sometime around 1965, Marge and Pete Miller planted a blue spruce 25 feet from the house. I imagine they hoped it would eventually grace the view from their dining room.  In their 50s, they would have plenty of time to watch it grow, making sure it got the care required to survive those risky early years. That it did, and their hopes were realized.

I first met the Millers and the spruce in 1994. We were in the market for a home in the Weyerhaeuser Area. We had settled on their home, a charming old farmhouse with a 2-acre yard and woods and fields beyond. We loved the house and the yard, but what was missing were trees.

I saw our yard as an almost blank canvas on which to paint a more natural landscape. We got busy that fall transplanting three spruces, two pines, a birch and an ash from the woods out back. That was only the beginning.

On a recent winter morning, I went out to cut down the blue spruce. It had been declining for many years, the victim of disease and age. I had trimmed the dead branches up until they became too high to safely reach. I can’t remember exactly when the spruce was no longer beautiful, but it continued to be useful to the birds and squirrels that came to the feeder hanging on a lower branch stub.  Like with an old pet though, there comes a day when you know it is time.

As the saw bit into the tree making my notch, I suddenly thought about the Leopold essay, “Axe in Hand” in which he wrote, “It is a matter of what a man thinks about when chopping, or deciding what to chop.”

I found myself thinking about many things. I pictured the Millers standing here planting this tree on a warm day in late April, bringing it buckets of water as needed, and their joy watching it grow over the years. I thought of the 29 years we had shared with the tree. There are those who might say, “It’s just a tree,” but I cannot. That is what I was thinking as I made my back cut. With a crack, the holding wood gave way and the tree crashed to the ground. I stood in silence for a minute before cutting the stump off smooth about a foot high.

Counting the annual rings, I determined the tree was about 58 years old, like me. I traced back 29 rings and estimated the tree was about 10 inches in diameter when we bought the house. I tried to remember it as it was when its blue green branches hung close to the ground but I couldn’t.

As I dragged the carcass out back to burn, I passed the trees we planted that first fall.  I looked at the pines, now 16 inches in diameter and 45 feet tall. I looked at others that came each year after, the tamaracks, the oaks, the cedars and all the rest. We had planted them all with the same hope as the Millers. Each had a purpose, a reason it was placed where it was.

I couldn’t help but think about when the time comes for us to leave this place to the next owners. Will they wonder how these trees got here? How they were carefully planted and cared for in those early risky years? It is my fervent hope they will not be “just trees.”

The view out our dining room window is not quite the same anymore. There is a Norway spruce, two tamarack and an aspen growing not far from the stump of our old friend, planted years ago in anticipation of this day. In time, this will become the view we remember. Already the birds and squirrels have become accustomed to the hole in the landscape, discovering the stump as a reliable place to find sunflower seeds. In that way the spruce is still giving us pleasure.

I cannot think of a more fitting headstone for a tree and testimony to the wisdom behind the old adage, “He who plants a tree plants a hope.”

Ron Weber

Ron Weber

Ron Weber is a Wisconsin DNR Forester living in Weyerhaeuser. He writes outdoor essays for several Wisconsin publications.
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