Sacred Ground

We had the tired, old apple tree taken down last week. Standing there looking at where it had stood all those years reminded me of something I'd written some years ago. A tree fell in the back yard the other night. Luckily it missed the house although it did take out the deck, the grill and a section of the fence. Now, all the damage is fixable, but that magnificent 60 foot maple tree is gone forever. I counted the rings on the broken trunk and that tree was 132 years old. It got me thinking. That tree was a sapling when we were still grieving for the boys who never came home from the Civil War. It stood tall and strong as our soldiers went off to the war to end all wars. And stood guard still as our boys went off to...World War II. It saw the dawn of flight and man on the moon. It watched families in this house grow up...grow old...be born and die. Some rings were fat...years with a lot of rain. Others were very thin...years of heat and drought. I imagined hot summer evenings at the turn of the century with neighbors sitting on the front porch sipping lemonade and tossing “Hot enough for ya's” back and forth. Well, the old maple is gone now and all that remains is a big old stump. You know, I don’t think I’ll have that stump removed. To me...it’s a little piece of sacred ground.