Poppa

I am part of freecycle (of course) and one of the things that came up 2 springs ago was white cedar saplings so knowing that M's dad uses cedar almost as his totem, tucking pieces into Christmas cards and caskets alike, I grabbed them figuring that he would like them.  They weren't saplings, these things were 3 feet high.  And there were 14 of them.  Well I distributed what I could amongst my friends and brought what was left up north to his Dad.  His brother took one, which left 5 that M helped him plant down in what he calls the cedar swamp.  A month later I asked how they were doing so we walked down there to check on them.  On the way down he told me stories of the different trees along the path like the basswoods that grew in clumps instead of solitary trees because he and his brother had cut the trees closest to the road to sell for shipping material when they were teenagers and the clumps were what had grown out of the stumps.  He showed me the mound that was actually an old stump that he and his father had pulled out with the team of horses when he was home from college one summer.  About how what we were walking on started out as Highway 8, then was abandoned when they put the paved road in at the bottom of the hill.  How then it became an Indian path and the reason for the Indian gap right next to the gate at the top of the driveway.  He pointed out dead limbs that he would have to "get to" before syrup season.  All in all I think it was only about a 20 minute walk but it was amazing to listen to his stories of this land that he grew up on and was now growing old on.  We entered the swamp from the north west and he didn't even hesitate as he walked up to the northern-most tree.  He examined the branches and needles and told me about how when you planted things here there were plenty of rocks you had to move and sometimes you just had to work around them if they wouldn't be moved.  How he hoped he had picked the right spot for the trees but only time would tell if that was true or not.  He examined each tree for signs that he had chosen well and before we reached the 3rd tree, I realized that he had planted them in a circle.  At the 5th tree he stopped to catch his breath and told me that he passed the cedar along as a sort of "good journey" wish and maybe it was a bit pagan but that was okay.  There was an Indian that he used to work with who taught him that there was more than one way to worship and that he hoped his kids had learned that lesson, and that he thought they maybe had.

We walked back mostly in comfortable silence.