LOOKING BACK: 'I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree'

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

— Trees: “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.”

I've never forgotten those lines from a poem by Joyce Kilmer which I learned as a child. Trees were rare in western Nebraska where I made my entry into the world in a ranch house surrounded by sand dunes. Sagebrush floated through the air when the wind blew and rattlesnakes slithered among cactus.

My first childhood memory was playing under a lone tree which shaded our front yard. I'd find pretty colored rocks and pretend they were people. A pink pebble covered with sparkled veins became me. I was the star!

A shiny brown rock was my boyfriend. Other, not so colorful rocks, were my playmates. A larger pair of rocks were parents. I made a house of sticks andfurnished it with colorful furniture cut out of the Montgomery Ward catalog. In my play-world, I was an only child with my own bedroom.

I played in the cool shade of that tree for hours during the long, hot summer days while my five older brothers and sisters did chores. Cows meandered close by, coming off the sparse grass to drink cool water in the large tank constantly filled from a tall squeaking windmill, the same windmill that pumped water into our house.

I was 8 when I said goodbye to the tree, when my real family moved. In my new home in the Ozarks, I spent hours walking through lush woods and splashing barefoot on hard rocks in the cold, cold creek. When we had to pick wild blackberries in July, I’d find berries under the shade of a tree, where they grew larger and sweeter.

Trees became my friends, a safe place from an unfriendly world. I’d climb up in a tall oak tree shading our yard and sit for hours on a huge branch. Or, I’d sit lazily on the rope swing hanging from that branch.

After my father died, we moved to Gravette, and there was an unbelievable large elm tree right outside our kitchen picture window. It was too big to climb, but we had many family picnics under its abundance of shade. When it became a victim ofthe Dutch Elm disease, we all cried as it was cut down and hauled away.

I've never moved from the Ozarks. My husband and I bought land north of Rogers, in Little Flock, with acres of trees where we enjoy the green of springtime and the color of falling leaves in autumn.

Fifteen years ago, I took my first trip back to my birthplace near Bridgeport, Nebraska. The house was gone but the tree, long dead, still stood, its limbs stretching out stark and bleached white. The same windmill dripped water into a stock pond.

Oil wells now dotted the white sand hills. Keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes,I dug up a cactus to plant in my front yard back home, where it blooms each year.

Ten years later, I took a second trip back to my roots. My sister and I drove out to our old ranch.

When we arrived, we discovered the windmill gone and that old tree fallen to the ground. We stood beside its white limbs. I reached down and picked up a pink rock to take back to my granddaughter. I often tell her the story of the little girl who played alone with pretty colored rocks under a big shade tree.

Marie Putman is a former Gravette resident and regular contributor to the Westside Eagle Observer.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 05/16/2012