The Smell of Trees

In 1998 we had an ice storm in Maine that was a major climatological event.  Where I lived, in the middle of nowhere, we were out of power for 11 days.  That was pretty typical.  I think the luckiest folks lost power only for three or four days.  There were people in some parts of the state who were out for 14 days, maybe more. 

I lived in the woods, in a little sweet cabin on 40 acres, surrounded by 10 square miles of wildlife refuge, a mile up a dead-end dirt road.  For two days my boyfriend, my neighbor, and I walked up and down that road with a chainsaw, cutting and clearing all the trees that had come down.  There were big limbs hanging on the power lines -- every 50 feet or so something was knocked into the line, or onto the road.  And we would turn around and go back and limbs, branches, trees would be down on the place we had just cleared. 

The woods were covered in about two inches of ice, maybe more.  The branches couldn't take the weight and you would hear this awful creaking and cracking and then a shatter as a branch fell, with the crashing of ice at everything it hit.  It was terrible.  Trees were just ripping apart.  My dog liked it.  She's a stick lover, and there were sticks everywhere. 

The strangest, and most horrible part about it was how it smelled.  It smelled like the inside of trees.  There's this raw green smell of resin and wood and sap, I can't describe it.  The words I would be inclined to use might sound good, fresh, healthy.  I walked those woods all the time, in winter and summer.  I know what the woods should smell like.  This was a different smell.  It was the smell of the guts of trees, the smell of living trees dying slowly.   There was this eerie raw treeflesh smell, and this crashing and shattering, constantly, for days and days.  It was the sound of the woods being decimated.   

On the second or third day, when my neighbor could get his car out, we drove up to town looking for something.  We came up on a ridge.   Everything glittered in the ice -- it was the first time the sun had been out.  And the treetops were all wrong and broken.  There were big pale gashes where trees had been ripped open and the branches hung the wrong way.  There were holes and crooked places.  My neighbor said it would take the woods a century to heal.   The canopy was shattered, and the downed branches and trees would become a tinderbox in future summers. 

I moved down here, and years have gone by, and I can't say I look at the canopy of the woods too often.  But our teeny little ice storm the other day brought that same dazzling silver coating.  I was driving along and watched cylinders of ice drop off powerlines in long shards, and shatter onto the road.  It reminded me of that time, where ice and branches were falling for days and days.   This morning I passed a couple of limbs down and for a moment I remembered the smell of all those raw tree branches. 

Comments

[pjm]

I remember driving up to Waterville in April after the storm, and thinking that the whole stretch of woods looked like it had been run through with a lawn trimmer. I was reading Bernd Heinrich's "The Trees in My Forest" (which you might like, by the way) at the time of the storm, and having this devastation paired with his explanations of the different adaptations made by different trees to deal with the swing of seasons was pretty powerful.

[ML]

This is a beautiful essay!

[Adam]

Have you ever read "Nobody's Fool?" Your esssay completely reminded me of that book, as I think it's set in Maine and the opening scene talks about branches falling from their own weight.

Anyway, that was a very interesting post. Luckily, Michigan doesn't get the same kindof ice storms.

[Ajf 4]

Enjoy your blog, very warm, let a person feel a lot!

[jordan 1]

Thank your for sharing the experience of you life. We are at the same

place. We can figure out the way it should be by sharing.