SPRUCE

I just realized that my longest standing non-mammalian intimate relationship is with this Spruce tree. We go way back to when I’d come to the Webster farm on field trips in pre-school. I probably didn’t notice it then. I’m sure I was preoccupied with piglets - but it was right here. I came back to town and started working at this farm as an adult - and we’ve been happily tangled up ever since. I’ve spent hundreds of hours pawing around in its branches - picking young cones like today then tender tips and back around again to cones. Thousands of hours more I’ve just been near it - eating lunch in its shade with my old dog - watching whole flocks of birds vanish into it - and erupt back out. I like to stand under it on a breezy day and daze up at it sloshing around like a car wash and swaying slow like a kelp bed. When it powders me with silky pollen I feel my smoothest. I feel a lot of nice things toward a lot of nice things - but this tree and me have stood the tests of time.