Years ago, I came into possession of some of the finest black spruce that has ever grown. Anyone familiar with the species probably knows they are often referred to as gasoline on a stick. They are built to burn. It is how their seeds are dispersed. My black spruce is lost in a surrounding ocean of the same. It is not a matter of if they will all go up in smoke but when. Thinning and clearing is my only hope for protection, a practice I have been diligent in for nearly 30 years, by hand. I will never finish.
After all these years I have finally become aware of a shared characteristic of nearly every single tree, early in their lives they all developed a ‘failed leader’. To understand what I have notice, please visualize a young spruce tree about waist high. For some reason, perhaps a phenomenon like ‘winter burn’ or hordes of hungry rabbits, the tree existing above the snow was killed. The surviving portion of my trees then developed new leaders, that took the trees successfully towards the blue sky above leaving the failed leaders behind and forgotten.
I love analogies. My black spruce trees offer up a bit of hope for what we are all experiencing with that previous guy and remaining national GOP leadership. They are completely failing, likely to perish. If we are lucky, we often are, new leadership will take over and we can all reach the blue sky above. Let us work together to do so.
I now view my black spruce’s failed leaders differently and I have given them a new moniker, ‘Trump Sticks’. They are dead withered failures that I now snap off with a brush axe as a matter of practice with humored enthusiasm.