The Two Tree Farm

January 24, 2010

A few years ago when visiting a friend, I was invited to walk behind his house and beyond. Into the bush one might say. He wanted to take mme on the short walk around his 32 acre property to witness what he had acquired a few months earlier. It had a large pond and a wide to ride earthen trail leading into a forest.

He is a retired grammar school teacher who enjoyed his job almost until the last day. Immediately after retiring he studied a little harder and became an RN. Some people have one job they’re proud of performing all through their laborious years but mmy bud Jim now can say he has another. But even more…

His latest endeavour unlike his first is to stand guard over the bridges, benches, cardboard boxes and any place he can that most everyone else can’t or won’t see. Well, let mme change that a bit most can see them at times and maybe would if they could but Jim is one of those people who look for them specifically.

I’ve known Jim for about 15 years. While living on the rez in good ‘ol South Dakota he showed up one day along with over a dozen other people from his surrounding home at the time to lend a hand for Habitat For Humanity.

Ever since then and all the years until his first retirement he’s returned to the rez specifically on Thanksgiving weekends. The all day and into the nights four day, round trip drive was besides other things to bring toys to the local YMCA.

All his grammar school classes acquired an SUV’s worth as well as a 5’ x 6’ U-Haul trailer full of toys. One year during his annual Santa’s run he managed to cramp in a set of new and cheaper where he lived car tires for yours truly.

The mman is a giver of mountains who takes pride in always making his best effort to help others in distress. He is definitely one of the chosen phew who the spirits upstairs lent us for his time to save the world. I’d call him a saint if it weren’t for the fact that he could have been taller and had longer hair.

His U. S. Marine background should help those superiors and buddies proud of what he’s accomplished before and since training. They’ve sent him further on to help protect, defend and lead us across the streets of difficult times. He fears nothing except the dissed comfort of others while sharing his heart and his hair.

Jim’s latest job is not an everyday nine to five one; nor is it easy. He’ll often be roaming the streets in any weather that’s blistering hot or cold as hell nights to find and help those more unfortunate than most of us.

Coffee, blankets, clothes, shoes, plywood, tarp as a tent, a ride to a clinic, his organisations services, an emergency hospital run or just to stay around and shoot the breeze is in his heart when dedicating himself to those he’ll include as some may call ‘his job.’ A job that most would care not to do Jim is always there.

Technically it is his job but really it’s not. From how I can remember Jim as long as I’ve known him, it’s part of his soul to help humanity; his fellow mman, woman, child, animal, plant or vegetable. I’ve witnessed all those cases of Jim.

Of course he’d not want these facts publicly known. Like other past characters you may have read about on these pages, people like them and Jim usually place themselves in that anonymous box; hidden with the flaps shut until the trappings of society call them out; more often then not, to give light to us all.

Jim’s light when switched on shines brighter than most. His toast is his newly acquired farm he obtained from a close relative after years of hard work trying to find a refuge with Mother Nature’s arms in mind. His trees sing with him.

When I visited him just after he found his heaven on earth, he presented a tree that stood prominently and in clear view of his surroundings. It was a dead tree that looked like it is over 30 feet tall. Its form brings life to anyone who seizes it.

Its few substantial branches were gray and bare. Its over one foot diameter trunk was still strong. Its form in total reaches for the blue. Yes, that’s an artistic version of a photo of it and placed at the top of these words.

He wanted to keep it just where it stood because he loved the way it presented itself to visitors or especially I gathered as it appeared to him and at that time his new girlfriend who also appreciates the tree, like they do each other.

There’s another tree just before it that’s not just a tree one should appreciate from a distance. When walking up to the other shorter tree and within sight of the one mentioned before; anyone will notice the wooden handled tool caressed within its trunk; like two separate lovers in a long caress held to each other, overt time.

The tool I think is an old short handled shovel. The tool propped there for so long that the tree grew around it and holds it within itself. That tool will be there for as long as the shorter tree stands; longer if it doesn’t. A monument to ‘One.’

There’s no way to separate the tool without hurting that tree. They’re now two of the same. Similar, akin, equivalent, alike, friends, lovers, family, related, linked, interconnected, parallel, somewhat different except for the handle; together.

After seeing that first tree with Jim present, standing rite be sighed it I thought to mmyself; that’s Jim and where he stands with all of humanity; hugging it like the tree and the tool…

The Two Tree - Farm

The Two Tree - Farm
Alight in wish.

Our walk reigns softened soil
Scant hills path, our bliss.

The mist, the sun, the shades of this ‘ol tree
She stands tall, pleased, proud,
Her branches leafless,
Free.

Her reach to the sky touches blue.
Her hue’s glad, light’s refrain;
We feel her beam.
Her strength, her torch, our flame.

We kiss her reflection in our eyes.
We feel the same.
She caresses our souls with songs
We sing of her past.

She’ll always be there ‘fore us
In our care,
In our hearts,
In our last.