This small white pine is dramatically covered with ice. Every single needle, every tiny branch, and the slim trunk are coated with ice. Each has its own little sheath of ice. You would think they would all clump together, but they don’t. Each part of the tree, down to its separate needles, has its own relationship with the ice. And this is a good thing because if one part falls victim to the ice, not all the other parts will go.
Now, I told you about the ice and what it can do. The ice is true winter, not the snow as most people seem to think. Not the cold, either. It’s the ice that moves a place into the
season of death. Ice can wreak havoc on
the landscape, on the plants and animals, and on the water sources. Once the ice sets in for real, you know that
the Lord of Winter has entered the land and is in no hurry to leave it. The ice imprisons everything.
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| Imprisoned in ice. |
This is just a tiny new tree, perhaps a few years old. Imagine what the ice does to larger
trees. Eventually they become so heavy
with ice, layers upon layers of it, that they droop dangerously toward the
ground. Only the strong survive. Plenty of trees never make it to a stately
age here because of the ice. First
boughs snap, then branches, and then eventually the entire trunk. “Teenage” trees are by no means out of
danger. In fact, they are usually the
ones to snap in two. They sometimes get
too much gangly growth in the summer that is a bit weak, and if a good ice storm
or two hits, they’re history. The
birches are especially prone to this demise.
It takes quite a bit of strength, courage, and luck to make
it to be a big tree in Maine. I’d say the same goes for the people
here. There’s something about the ice
and cold. It breeds a different kind of
people, a kind of people who have become accustomed to difficulties and
hardships. Many who come here to live
will flee at the first serious ice storm.
Hothouse flowers, they are. The
locals just laugh.
We may not have the exotic beauty and intoxicating scents of
the tropics here in Maine,
but we have something better: Old oaks. Stubborn, hard, and indestructible. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
