This week, a legacy essay from Tony Norris.
A few yards from my front door stands my favorite tree to pee under. It has ever been so. I imagine a delta rich in potash and nitrogen beneath the pine needles feeding the coyote gourd that twists and spreads downhill in a luxuriant profusion.
From this sheltered vantage point I’ve surveyed many a sunrise and moonrise over the ragged edge of the forest a hundred yards away. A trio of ponderosas stands out against the sky. They were on guard when men started using steam power. The tallest was blasted long ago by lightning and a bare branch provides a perfect perch for sight hunters. I’ve watched a bald eagle take wing from there and soar over Doney Park airspace, it’s shadow like that of a small Cessna clipping the fence posts and sage.
I’m told Doney Park is an ancient lake bed. My home is situated in a pine forest that has been at the edge of open country for hundreds of years. I’m surrounded by a grove of 90-foot giants that spread their branches with more freedom than their more constricted fellows enjoy. They have a distinct character with personalities like those of siblings in a family. After 30 years of framing my morning horizon I feel a kinship to my grove of genial giants. They are timeless and will doubtless be here long after my departure.
A couple of years into our extended drought cycle bark beetles claimed the westernmost of my trees. This tree was favored by great horned owls for mating in January. Their courting exchange was sweet and compelling. When they took flight their broad wings blotted out handfuls of stars and sent cascades of sparkling powder snow from the top branches. A savvy friend cut down the massive trunk in an explosion of dust and flying twigs. The news of my eldest brother’s passing was on my mind as I counted annual rings on the huge stump. The tree was already a thriving sprout a couple of feet tall swaddled in winter snows when my grandfather Henry “Newyears” Norris was born on Jan. 1, 1845. He was as close in time to his Norse and Celtic ancestors who gathered in sacred groves to honor the full moons as I was to him.
A Doney Park wind had rattled cinders against the windows all night. Dawn brought a lull. Like the familiar skyline of a great city, I knew at a glance something was amiss when I stepped into my yard and looked at the silhouette of my pines against the rising sun. The southernmost tree, the one that leaned at a dizzy angle toward the hog pen, had twisted in the relentless gale and snapped off 60 feet above the ground leaving a solitary wood remnant and an unobstructed view of Turkey Hill. Later that day I received the call informing me that my friend, master storyteller Michael LaCapa, had died. Michael would recount waking at his grandma’s home on the Rez and smelling her cooking fry bread in the kitchen below. An infectious smile would cross his face and he’d whisper, “It’s going to be a good day.”
His audience glimpsed a safe, precious place we would all return to if we could. I’m not much given to what I consider the woo-woo side of the equation. I like substance; stuff I can see and touch, re-producible results. That night Michael came to me in a dream. He stood tall—no, not really tall because he was always a little on the short-if-stout side, but upright and strong like before the car wreck that crushed his body. I recalled how he looked when he stood beneath a weathered piñon pine in the White Mountains and pointed out his family fields. He didn’t speak in the dream but I knew he was saying goodbye. Then he transformed into a figure of roiling colloidal silver in front of me and then shot into the sky and was gone.
I told you it was a dream, but somehow I was comforted.
In recent years bark beetles attacked the three monarchs on the eastern horizon. First the green needles turned a milky copper and then they fell off, followed by the great slabs of bark. Then the shallow roots of the two shorter ponderosas yielded to the incredible leverage of the wind and they fell against the biggest tree like pick-up-sticks where they remain today. Each loss has mirrored the passing of one of my family members.
Let us sit down together in the groves of old trees and talk about those things that matter.
This column originally ran in Flag Live on Nov. 22, 2012. Tony Norris is a working musician, storyteller and folklorist with a writing habit. He’s called Flagstaff home for 30-plus years. Visit his website at www.tonynorris.com.
