The Man Who Planted Trees
/My father-in-law died yesterday after a long and courageous fight with cancer. He was a man of remarkable imagination and vision, and his sanguine attitude toward long-term projects is an example to writers and to anyone else who might feel called to bite off more than they can chew. In his honor, here's a piece I wrote about him a few years ago.
Until recently, my in-laws had a farm in South Georgia. When they bought the place, its charms weren't altogether obvious to the casual observer. It was scrubby where it wasn't planted in pines and swampy where it wasn't scrubby. But my father-in-law made it the work of twenty years to beautify the place.
When he planted pines, he planted longleaf, the tree that once shaded all of South Georgia--indeed, the tree that towered over nearly every mile of Hernando Desoto's path from Florida through the Deep South to the Mississippi River.
By the time my father-in-law was born, the longleaf had been logged to near-extinction; when the trees were replaced at all, they were replaced by faster-growing slash and loblolly pines, which produce income twice as fast as longleaf, but always fall well short of the longleaf's native majesty. Much of South Georgia's wealth and beauty had once been attached to the longleaf pines, before they were felled and floated down the Ocmulgee and Altamaha to the ocean, then shipped away to be the ribs of great buildings far away from Georgia. My father-in-law loves his native country; no wonder he planted longleaf. If they take forty years to grow to maturity--well, then, they take forty years. He is a man of imagination and hope.
Read More