The Old Tree

This morning I read a special posting in a special blog. The blog is named Dave and Susie’s Musings. Their last posting speaks of Timber being destroyed by storms. That brought me to a special experience we had in Alberta. I will tell you about an old tree we had. It was the time when we lived on a very large property in Alberta, Canada. We lived in an old house from 1936. It had a roof of asphalt shingles. A couple of large Jack Pines were standing close to the house. They had survived a huge forest fire around 1910. We were always afraid a lightning would lit up these trees which invariably would lead to burning down our house. One year we came back from California. It was in April. One of the old Jack Pines had been attacked by a tree porcupine which had stripped off bark all around the tree. We could already see that the tree was dying. A month later I started my chainsaw. There was no other way with it, the tree had to come down. When it fell our eyes filled with tears. It was a very emotional moment. This tree had probably seen Indians moving around and just how many bears had used it to scratch their backs? After surviving the major forest fire, it now had become a fire hazard itself. I started to cut up the huge trunk. When I got to the really big lower parts I had an idea. maybe we could use this for something other than firewood? I had always had the idea of carving something with a chainsaw. So I made these chunks of the lower end fairly large. After we had cleared all the debris away I started the chainsaw again and carved a 3ft. tall pelican of it. It was painted white, and I left the beak in natural wood. It was beautiful. Why I made a pelican? Because every summer we had a small group of pelicans on the lake. You see the pelican in the picture to the left. We put it where it belonged in the most natural way – on top of the root of the Jack Pine from where it guarded the property. There was enough wood to carve several pelicans. One of them was purchased by someone in Ontario. It ended up in his garden. We have again fought our way through an impossible internet connection with Bell-Aliant. With the long weekend nearly over I hope and expect some reaction to my Bell-Canada letter the coming days. We are also back to the normal cold AND rainy weather. And the news is it’s gonna last for several days into the next week. YOU have a great week and thanks again for visiting!