There’s a sad, sick little cottonwood tree near the Lair, just where the driveway meets the main channel of the wash. It grew at a poor spot, at the tail end of a sandy island between two channels, where it probably seldom saw water.
It has never been healthy in all the time I’ve known it – some sort of bug was burrowing under the bark and stripping more and more of it to bare wood. But every year it leafed out, and every year it seemed to grow just a little.
Then last July’s big flood happened. Being in the geographic center of the wash as a whole, the little cottonwood was right in its path.
The whole trunk and all the lower branches were inundated. It must be well-rooted because it never shook even as tons of stuff hit it. Wrapped right around it, as a matter of fact.
After things dried out I cut away a lot of the wood the tree had stopped but there wasn’t anything practical I could do about the tons of rock and sand caught in the web of debris. The little tree literally took a terrible hit.
And it looks like it won’t survive it.
The bugs went nuts, there’s barely any bark left, and only an odd branch here and there bothered sending out any leaves at all this spring.
Doesn’t really matter. That whole island, which had grown a whole bunch of green stuff, is currently just sand and debris and this is no surprise. But if you don’t count junipers as trees – and it’s a question of some local dispute – that’s the only real tree anywhere in sight of the cabin. I’ll kind of miss it.
Next years firewood.
Familiarity breeds attachment. My condolences.