A couple of months and perhaps two more Wednesdays ago, I received a call from a Mennonite chap who operates a sawmill out and about the Waterloo Wellington County line. He had called in reaction to an article I had written about our bluebird house projects. He mentioned that he had some rough sawn pine, though having a few flaws, making it not in demand for most finished products, he thought I might be able to use it for some of my birdhouse projects.
As we were going right past his farm to pick up a couple of bird cages from the Bunnyview wholesale outlet at Winterbourne, we popped in to have a boo. Though the lumber was a little too thick to work well with our school projects, it is ideal for wood duck, and kestrel nesting boxes, a few of which we usually manage to get up each year, somewhere, some place. We left there with the pickup truck’s box neatly filled.
While there, we saw in the distance across the yard something that I thought I would never see in this province. There on the lot was a truckload of white pine logs the likes of which I have never seen before.
Unfortunately my camera was not with me. They were 50 feet in length, greater than 24 inches at the base and the top was not less than 20 inches on any one of them. When I inquired, from where? He explained.
“From Michigan, across the border.” Then he went on to explain that at the very beginning of the last century’s turn, both Canada and United States, realizing their folly of clear-cutting to such an extent, attempted correction by replanting vast areas. Canada’s mistake was in choosing the fast growing, short lived jack-pine, while below the 49th they planted the tall growing, long-lived white pine. It was a truckload of those 100-year-old trees that I saw at this so-called little country sawmill.
I was again reminded of all that just the other day. I had taken an orchid over to place on the headstone of my Little Lady. Though she lies in the newer section of the Fergus cemetery, as do my Mother and Father, I chose on this day to wander down and through the older part of the cemetery. I have an older brother and two baby sisters buried there.
As I walked down the centre lane of this well aged area, where the bones of many of Fergus and district’s pioneer ancestors rest; I couldn’t help but stop and listen to the wind in the giant old trees, flanking each side, which too, were planted sometime near the century’s turn.
The wind whispered through the boughs of the 100-year-old Norway spruce, and sighed through the dangling needles of the equally aged white pine. I couldn’t quite feel anything more than remorse for a loan single oak, that stood stalwart and straight, there among them. Being a tree that depends on wind pollination, as do both of its neighbouring giants, I couldn’t help wonder – was it planted alone there by man, by mistake, or planted by a squirrel who just wasn’t thinking? No viable acorns will fall from its towering limb tips.
My father, who passed away at 91, often mentioned that he remembered when those trees were planted, and although not quite yet as large as the ones I saw at the little country sawmill, they are of an interesting size. I have often, in the past, walked through there among them during the darkness of night to place a hand on their trunk to feel the rough bark and the slightest tremor of movement, and to hear the murmur of breezes, high up there in their towering branches.
Try it some time; I think you’ll be impressed. But here lies a word of caution; don’t wear a white sheet as a garment. That’s not how to win friends and impress many people. No. Not after dark, in so such a setting.
Take care, ‘cause we care.