Season's Greetings: the Holiday Letter...

"Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
                                                                   Ebenezer Scrooge

Or for those readers not prone to salutatory offense: "Merry Christmas!" And for the rest of the readers who just want all the fuss and bother behind them, "Happy New Year!" A hearty thanks to those who felt compelled over the years to put pen to paper and chronicle their family's annual adventures, accomplishments, and experiences to share with those to whom they sent holiday cards. May it be a comfort to know that taking the time to read these missives at this, the busiest time of the year, provided the recipients a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle, frenetic hurry, scurry of the season.

The narrator guiltily admits that as long as he can remember he has included little more in his Christmas cards than a hastily scribbled sentence or two followed by the sender's scrawled signature.  After receiving a goodly number of holiday letters over the years the Editor decided it was high time to reply in kind.

For some curious reason the holiday letter is composed in the narrative third person which appears to be the proper etiquette for this seasonal genre.The author's intent is to share his year with the reader, yet lest he seem to be boasting, chooses to couch the details as if they were not about his family's exploits but those of the neighbors down the block. Staying true to that format of detachment, the following holiday letter begins its maiden voyage.

In April Terry and Trecia journeyed to East Washington for the annual Johnson family crab feed where they spent a couple of days breaking garlic bread with his mother (ninety-five years old and a gracious hostess), the family, and exchanging gossip in the presence of a good deal of freshly cracked crab and mountains of potato salad (the latter replete with three kinds of pickles). The event was not without mishap, however. While engaged in a woodcarving project, Terry's chisel slipped and deeply speared the hollow between his left hand thumb and forefinger, sending the blood gushing, as the saying goes "like a stuck hog." Brother Keith performed first aid on the victim, staunched the flow of blood with an abundance of bandage and tape as if instead of suffering a self-inflicted puncture wound the victim had lost an entire limb. The loss of left handed assistance precluded the handicapped from cracking crab, unfortunately a two-handed operation, but Trecia kindly came to the rescue by shelling out a tasty plateful for the hapless injured. Except for a fleeting concern about tetanus, the remainder of the event passed without incident.

In September Terry and Trecia made their annual pilgrimage to Hood River, Oregon. They split their stay at the Best Western Plus to attend the nuptials of niece Casey and fiance Brendan. The happy couple's ceremony was held at Camp Namanu, a former Girl Scout Camp nestled in the rain forest on the west slopes of Mt. Hood. Terry and Trecia rendezvoused with daughter Marika Finkel, husband Avi and grandsons Atticus L. (seven years old come February) and Augustus T. (three years old in January). Vows were exchanged in a forest amphitheatre accessed by a heady climb up an old game trail once explored by Lewis and Clark. Without the assistance of oxygen the ascent challenged the older guests (namely the Editor and his wife). Surrounded by towering cathedral firs the bride and bridegroom tied the knot in the company of friends and family, most who managed the climb without cardiac arrest.

The night was spent in Cabin Kanga , one of the few campsites with heat and indoor plumbing (an hour's drive from the amenities of the Best Western). Lying on a foam rubber mattress in a bench-like cranny, rain drumming on the shingles, surrounded by the echoes of giggling Girl Scout ghosts made for a long and restless night. With the exception of the tittering ghosts the experience recalled memories of the week Terry spent as a Boy Scout at Camp Scout A Vista. The only thing missing being the acrid smell of sun baked tarpaulin and the uncomfortable lump of earth that spoke to the small of his back through the thin kapok of a sleeping bag. Hot showers at the Best Western helped wash away the trauma.

Sometime in June Terry began a merry jaunt down medical lane when an aortic calcium score returned numbers much higher--unfortunately--than those of his GRE. Thus began an odyssey by which he was introduced to a variety of tests (many ending in the suffix "gram") and a cardiologist whose bedside manner presented much the same as Margaret Thatcher's. Issuing a brusque edict, Doctor informed him he was about to take a cruise on the Mediterranean Diet.

In November Terry was able to scratch "ambulance ride" off his bucket list when the ER doctors, instead of dialing Uber, mistakenly dispatched an emergency vehicle. After a rock 'n roll ride in the "meat wagon," the EMTs offloaded him at the ER entrance of Providence Hospital in Everett where they wheeled him unceremoniously through the labyrinthine corridors of that vast edifice to a "room already waiting for him."

After a night similar to the one spent at Camp Namanu (a bevy of nurses having replaced the giggling Girl Scouts) Terry was treated to a 5:00 a.m. tonsorial procedure a night nurse had earlier scrawled on the room's white board as a"groin prep." At one minute of five a diminutive female nurse armed with an electric razor swished in as if by magic and performed a procedure Terry would not have dared ask his wife, a hair dresser of forty-three years, to perform. With purring razor in hand and the work site nearly at eye level, the "little shaver" as Terry chose to call her, performed her task professionally and much to the blushing patient's relief, quickly.

The next few hours were a swirl of events stemming from the medical opinion: "I don't know what the hell to do with him." After a lengthy consultation with her "team" Terry was told, "If he were her husband, she'd have him undergo an invasive procedure called an 'angiogram,'" from which he concluded that her husband must lead a very interesting life indeed. As he was pondering that conclusion, Terry was whisked off through more long corridors again and wheeled into a large room furnished with glaring lights, an array of mirrors, and a refrigeration unit that filled the sterile compartment with arctic air. Almost immediately he was set upon by a team of masked men and women, one of who told him "not to move...especially his right arm." Best to obey a masked man, he thought, and given the ambient temperature it was easy to comply. Then off again through the corridors to the room "still waiting for him." After dozing off and on through a Seahawks game, fussing with some paperwork, and cruising five circuits of the nurses' station, he left the long corridors behind him in his own car, driven by his own wife where he arrived at his own home without further incident--clean shaven.

Terry and Trecia were able to take a break from matters medical long enough to host the family Thanksgiving gathering and after taking a few days to catch their breath rushed headlong into preparations for the family Christmas Doin's at which they hosted twenty-nine guests.

Now that the first (and last ever) holiday letter is composed and posted, it's on into the New Year and whatever snares and pitfalls most certainly lie awaiting. And for those so inclined to send future holiday letters, by no means feel obligated to do so.

To each and all a Happy New Year.

The Editor

To Every Thing there is a Season...

                                                                                        
                                                                                       

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up
that which is planted.
                                   Ecclesiastes 3:2

Mid-October and it is strangely silent here on our one slim acre. Normally the raucous scolding of the jays would shatter the Valley calm from dawn til dusk. The stealthy flight of those blue thieves leapfrogging from tree to tree along the property lines was as regular as the daily commuter traffic out front. But not this fall; the noisy marauders are nowhere to be seen, have taken their thieving ways elsewhere.

"I'm going to pick up a walnut tree for my arboretum," Herman Zylstra, our retired dairy farmer neighbor told me. "Do you want me pick up one for you?" With the holiday baking in mind I told him, sure, it would be nice to have a walnut tree on the place, and that's how we came by the tree at the back of the property. That was over forty years ago....

I planted the sapling, watched the slip of a tree grow. It definitely liked the Valley soil, was quite at home here. The tree grew with a surprising vigor year after year even after its kin, light deprived, stunted, died in Herman's arboretum. Patiently I waited for my first walnut crop. Seven years, eight years, perhaps ten went by until I spied a few green orbs peering from the foliage. It was a crop, however, not destined for holiday sweetmeats. A flock of crows appeared out of nowhere, descended on the tree like the Black Plague and in five minutes the first ever walnut crop disappeared into the blue (or black).

The tree, a species (a Bastogne walnut) different from its the kindred English walnut, grew to a height of eighty feet (my estimate) and 127" in circumference chest high (my tape measure). The tree's vast canopy shaded the garden from the heat of summer sun, made afternoon gardening bearable. Its shadow spread across the backyard like a thunder cloud, cooled the west end of our house those hot summer evenings. The first hard fall frost would send the large leaves spiraling to earth nearly en mass and until early May the next year the branches would be bare.

Not only the robbing jays but also smaller bird species would flit about the leaves and branches. From their sentry posts atop the tree, hawks scanned the garden below for unsuspecting songbirds foraging at the feeding station or in the garden. For two or three seasons we had a nesting pair of mourning doves raise young in the branches. The tree's main trunk was riddled with cribbage board holes, each a feeding station for sapsuckers which performed their drilling with such stealth I never spied a single one. At harvest time squirrels, as many as a half dozen at a time, performed acrobatics among the branches as if they were part of an act for Cirque du soleil. A wound from a pruned off branch healed into a scar that put me in mind of a barn owl's face The tree trunk gave me a critical stare every time I passed by on the mower.

In latter years the tree bore so heavily feathered and furry thieves hardly made a dent in the crop. We gathered walnuts by the buckets full, many dislodged by hungry jays whose harvesting technique made gathering the mast easier. The nuts would shower down through the branches ricocheting from limb to limb like caroming pin balls in an arcade machine. From time to time I'd be pelted by husk shrapnel. After giving the nuts a good washing in a bucket of water, agitating and rinsing them a few times to remove husk residue, I'd pour them into our garden cart to dry. The cart had a metal mesh floor that allowed for good ventilation. A day or two to dry and I'd dump them on the hearth behind the wood stove to dry and cure.

The last few years the walnut began shedding branches, not an indicator of a tree in robust health, but I dismissed this self pruning as part of the "maturing" process. After storms tossed and whipped the branches winters and early spring, I would find downed limbs, some the size of my forearm, dry and brittle as bone, scattered about the trunk. Before each mowing session I'd have to carry or drag the fallout to the brush pile. But the tree continued to bear fruit, some years more heavily than others. This year the tree had a prodigious crop of walnuts. The branches bent under their load, the lower boughs scraped the ground under the weight. Summer pruning was in order just to be able to mow beneath the tree.

One morning in late July as I stepped out on the deck to don my garden boots and head to the chicken coop I heard what I thought was automatic weapons fire, a ripping, staccato kind of noise. I first thought of the firing range west of the Valley and thought this gunfire was dangerously close to the back fence. Stunned and amazed by the awesome sound I froze for a moment, confused, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar. I gazed toward the sound and then I saw the scar, a white slash gleaming in the morning sun, a parting of the bark where before there had been a limb.

The limb now sprawled across the back of the property. It had crashed down narrowly missing a pie cherry tree and now lay splayed out over the backyard. The rending sound brought my wife out of bed to ask about the commotion. I pointed to the tangle of branches, leaves, and globes of walnuts. In disbelief we walked out for a closer look and saw the large leader had split at the trunk, sheared off, leaving the other half still defying gravity. My wife approached that side of the tree for a closer look. I warned her to stay out from under the half leader still attached. It was a warning well heeded because not five minutes later the second half splintered and fell, coming to rest neatly around a hive of bees on the stand beneath. Branches and leaves had gently enfolded the hive as if hesitant to disturb its occupants which now swirled about in confusion trying to get their bearings.

Walnuts lay thick on the ground everywhere, made walking difficult--like traversing a skate deck covered with marbles. We now had a mess to deal with...and a big problem, a problem beyond us, a problem that required professional help. The two tree services we consulted both reached the same conclusion: pruning or trimming the tree would only prolong the inevitable. I had hoped to save the tree; perhaps a canopy trim, a pruning back of the limbs all around? The loss of the two large limbs, we were told, had the tree off balance, the weight now unequally distributed because of the heavy crop. In its weakened state more branches were sure to suffer the same fate. (In fact yet another large limb came down a couple days later.) Fate was a concern of mine, too. How often had I mowed beneath the tree over the years...that summer in fact? One thing for sure: having a leader that size crash down on me would have caused a headache no aspirin could cure. No way around it: the tree would have to go. A date was set.

The executioners arrived at eight in the morning. (Because of the sentiment involved, I say "executioners" although the tree service crew were polite and very professional. Still, as the tree was dismembered limb by limb, we felt like we were watching the execution of a longtime friend.)

The grand old walnut didn't go peacefully. The limbs were so heavily laden, the first one bucked back, narrowly missing the young sawyer. Compensating for the load per branch, after the near catastrophe the team made sure to set their chokers back up the branch, balancing the weight of the fruit against that of the leader.

The sawyer severed limb after limb from the trunk, working his way earthward one leader at a time. Swinging in space, freed from its parent trunk, the leaders were swung over the fence line, lowered, and then fed into the maw of a chattering chipper where each was shredded into thousands of chips off the old block.

Finally all that was left of our summer shade and the year's monstrous walnut crop was the last  twenty feet of the trunk and two heaping piles of rounds salvaged for firewood.

  













Walnut lumber is prime woodworking material. The owner of the tree service helped broker a deal for the trunk which helped defray some of the removal costs. The thought that someone somewhere might have furniture or wood crafts for their home fashioned from a tree that grew, flourished and shaded our property for decades helped somewhat to bear the loss of a significant part of our landscape.

It took a forty-eight inch bar to cut through the butt of the trunk which came down with a thud you could feel in your knees. To fit the truck bed, the trunk was halved, each half lifted skillfully and placed strategically for a balanced load. Then the old longtime resident left our one slim acre and rolled on down the road leaving giant hole in the sky where it had once stood. Gone now is the favorite perch of our avian visitors. Gone our summer shade. Gone the supply of nuts for holiday baking. Gone, too, the seasonal sunset displays bleeding through the tree's barren branches, a technicolor chiaroscuro of crimson fire. 

                                                                   *          *          *          *

The other day I saw a curious sight. A gray squirrel anchored on his haunches, sitting up in that quaint way of squirrels, tail puffed and curled at attention. He appeared to be pondering what was left of the walnut tree, looking at the slab of trunk as if it were a dance floor and he looking for a partner. It seemed to me his face wore a quizzical expression as if to say, "Seems to me I remember a walnut tree around here somewhere." He then scratched his head, obviously confused. He held this pose for a couple of minutes. Then in the way of all squirrels he darted off to parts unknown, taking the memory of the walnut tree with him.