Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed in order to analyze atmospheric conditions during different periods in history. (Wikipedia)
June. Lovely June.
Thanks to all the new growth, the dead trees that litter our five acres like an enormous set of Pick-up Sticks in March are hidden in June. The big one that split during a particularly nasty thunderstorm last year and fell only part way down before it hung up on a smaller tree next to it doesn’t drive me nuts. The big log that points like an arrow toward the lake has a soft carpet of bright green moss in June. Yesterday, I watched two chubby gray squirrels square off on top of it like Sumo wrestlers. Or maybe they were dancing a jig. In June, anything is possible.
I was a June bride. I stepped off an airplane from Seoul with our son in June. Our daughter has a June birthday. I get up earlier, sometimes even before the sun does, in June. I go to bed earlier, too, so I can beat the sun the next morning, and the next. I measure the weeks in June by when the grass needs cutting. I tell myself that planning for next’s years courses can wait, because it can. And then, I read books I am not obligated to highlight and plan lessons around.
As a family, we celebrated two different college graduations in May. Two others completed their first year of college. The rest of the trees in our forest are hard at work nurturing their own seedlings or just working hard doing what they do to contribute to society. All of us older trees are happy to see their growth. This is what we all hoped for back when we were wiping their sticky Popsicle faces and telling them to walk, not run, on the boat dock so many Junes ago. One is preparing for a move and new adventures in Chicago. Another is planning a September wedding of fairly epic proportions. Life is good in the woods.
Years ago, we had to have one of the few elm trees on our property cut down near the driveway. After the trunk was hauled away, I looked at the stump to count the growth rings. Something had altered the tree’s growth pattern when it was just a sapling because instead of circles, a heart had formed where rings should have been. A perfect heart.
In June, I think about that tree a lot as I count the growth rings in all the tree people I love.
The Loon Whisperer 