This is the old mountain maple that sits just outside the house. It is closer to the shore than any other deciduous tree I have seen. In fact, it is right on the rocky shore. Somehow it has managed to survive the salt water and the salt air. I don’t know how its roots can stand the salt water, but perhaps it has found a pocket of fresh water underground.
The mountain maple is a very hardy species of maple and is
found in the far northeast of the U.S.
and into Canada. It can handle terrifically cold weather and
rocky terrain, and its sap can be used for maple syrup, although it is not as
common to do so as it is with the sugar maple tree. The sap in mountain maples is not as sweet as
that of the sugar maple or the black maple.
This particular mountain maple is quite old with a large
stout trunk, but it has suffered from its choice of home. Its growth has been stunted as compared to
some mountain maples, although it is still a good-sized tree. It is the very last tree to leaf out in the
spring and the very first to lose its leaves in the fall. Its fall leaves are pretty but not as
spectacular as the fall leaves of a sugar maple. Not only is its trunk twisted a bit, but the branches
are as well, and moss, lichen, and algae grow throughout the tree.
 |
| The mountain maple in its blanket of white. |
Every year I think to myself, “This time the old tree won’t
come back,” but every year it does come back.
Somehow it comes back, even though its growing season is so short and
even though it is covered with various mosses.
Of course, you wouldn’t know that by looking at it now in the
winter. Now it provides a beautiful
backdrop to a very ordinary and gray sky.
Now it wears its pretty white blanket, and the mosses and lichens have gone
to sleep.
I actually think that this tree is prettier in the winter
than in the summer. There are much
prettier trees in the summer, although I am grateful for the shade this tree
provides to my deck at that time. Maybe
it’s just this old tree’s gnarly stubbornness I adore more than anything else. Winter is not a defeat for this tree at
all. Terrible snowstorms and layers upon
layers of ice have done nothing but strengthen its resolve. It has suffered countless “defeats” like
winter before and laughed through them all.
I expect it will do the same this year as well.
So I’m not going to say it this year. I’m not going to say, “This time the old tree
won’t come back,” because I have a feeling it will be coming back year after
year in the spring long after I’m gone.
