Soft Stories One: Old Man Cedar

Old Man Cedar

Our church property forms a perfect rectangle that fronts a “Farm to Market” road outside a city in South Texas. It is one hundred yards wide and three hundred yards deep. We bought it in the early 90s for $55,000, offering a sizable down payment and paying off the balance within a year. After that it sat unused for about seven years while the odd collection of dreamers and silly persons who make up our church tried to figure out how to finance and construct a building.

At the time we bought it, most of this acreage was an impenetrable tangle of trees, vines, cactus, and other assorted plants. There was a sizable clearing at the back – maybe an acre – but most of the land was inaccessible unless you were willing to crawl, stoop, squeeze, or otherwise pick your way through at your own risk.

Two parallel tire tracks along the right fence indicated that something of a road used to be there. These tracks led all the way to the back of the property, but the brush and foliage had narrowed this lane to the point of being unusable except as a footpath.

Apart from the odd Mesquite, Chinaberry, Red Oak, or Cedar Elm - which is the Christian Science of trees, being neither Cedar or Elm - the trees on our land are of four types: Live Oak, Mountain Laurel, Texas Persimmon, and Ashe Juniper.

The Ashe Juniper is commonly called "Cedar” or some variant that usually includes profanity. Religious people might call it, “damn Cedar” or “stupid Cedar.” Less pious people refer to it as “goddam Cedar” or even “fuckin Cedar,” if they are feeling particularly vulgar.

Overgrazing and the elimination of natural fires over the last one-hundred and fifty years has led to an explosion of Cedar in southern Texas. Cedar grows like a weed and uses more than twice the water that other trees require. If left untended, a piece of land can become overrun with Cedar, which crowds out the native grasses and other plants. If that wasn’t bad enough, Cedar produces an extraordinary amount of pollen. Sometimes you can actually see the Cedar buds burst, sending little puffs of yellow powder into the air. At certain times of the year local newscasts announce the Cedar pollen count daily while half the residents rush to the pharmacy for doses of expensive allergy medicines.

Local hatred of Cedar seems to rise with the pollen count, and then the religious and irreligious alike combine all of their Cedar invectives into one blasphemous string of profanity that is a wondrous thing to behold. Cursing the Cedar is truly a South Texas cultural phenomenon. Surely someone will produce an award-winning documentary about this one day.

For all of these reasons, most landowners in this part of the world spend a goodly percentage of their lives fighting Cedar. We cuss it, chop at it, burn it, haul it away, and try to develop strategies for keeping it the hell off our land.

It's pretty much a losing battle, but you know Texans. We like a good fight, especially if we know we can’t win. In our minds there’s nothing more romantic than a good ass-kicking that might become a mediocre movie one day.

Sometime around 1996 I decided I wanted to get the feel of our property, so I armored myself with sturdy jeans, good boots, a heavy shirt, and the first of three pairs of leather gloves I would wear out on this land. I followed the tire tracks to the clearing at the back, centered myself at about fifty yards from each fence, and vowed to walk through the middle of the property, all the way to the front. I knew I would likely end up with my pants full of cactus needles and a nice collection of insect bites, but I was determined to give it a try.

The journey was enjoyable, though I spent a good bit of it on my knees squeezing through the brush and trying to find ways around huge beds of cactus. At one point I entered the largest thicket of Mountain Laurel I had ever seen. It was a stunning sight, and I wondered what it would be like to stand there in the spring when the laurels bloom with heavy-scented violet flowers.

Those laurels now sit off the back porch of our retreat cottage, and I watched them bloom this spring for the first time.

About halfway to the front, close to the absolute center of our land, I entered a grove that seemed a little different from what I had experienced up to that point. It was darker, for one thing. There were fewer plants on the ground around the trees. It seemed older somehow, and I could smell the pungent odor of fungus, rotting leaves, and rich soil. I reached an impasse and had to drop to the ground to crawl under some vines. When I got to my feet I froze, startled and amazed. I was standing at the base of the most enormous Cedar I had ever seen.

Most of the Cedar around here grow short and squatty, more like large bushes. They’re usually ten to fifteen feet tall and about that wide. The main trunk, if you can find one, splits quickly into numerous branches, sometimes only a few inches off the ground. From these main branches come scores of limbs jutting out in every direction. You have to cut your way to the center of a Cedar before you can even see how to go about cutting it down.

Sometimes I think Cedar was designed from the very beginning to prevent humans from getting in close with a chain saw.

This Cedar was different. It had one massive trunk with mighty roots planted firmly in the rocky ground at my feet. The trunk rose higher than my head before the branches began. I tried to put my arms around it, but my hands would not meet on the other side. It was thirty feet tall and dominated the area. At its base, only lichens and moss flourished in the dim light. Everything around it had a greenish tint. It was like some kind of ancient shrine.

Five withered Oaks struggled to survive under its towering canopy. One of its huge limbs had fallen long ago, split by lightening or perhaps broken off in an ice storm. It lay across one of the smaller Oaks, bending and deforming it. The little Oak trees seemed resigned to their dwarfed existence, living on what water and sunlight they could glean.

These were the signs of a classic battle for survival that had been raging for half a century or more. And the Cedar was the clear victor.

I felt very small and wanted to take back everything I had ever said about Cedar. The story of this tree is impossible to know, but one can make a reasonable guess. Several hundred years ago, a small Cedar sprouted in a very dense part of our land. The little Cedar was forced to abandon its common form and reach straight and tall for sunlight. Over the years it battled all the local trees for resources, surviving against all odds to become the giant that stood before me. I’ve never seen a Cedar in our part of the state that can rival its majesty.

I felt as though I had been ushered back to a time before Christianity, back to a time before the people of The Word fought the people of Nature for the spiritual rule of Europe. Everything that is pagan within me cried out in remembrance of what was old and good and true.

Much of our Word religion is built on the chassis of the old nature religions. I am not afraid or ashamed of this. I pay the old religions proper respect every year at Christmas and Easter. I never forget that the Magi followed their star to the manger.

I laid my hand reverently on the proud trunk and said, "I shall call you ‘Old Man Cedar,’ and though other Cedars will be cut down, you may stay. I will clear a path to you through the forest so others can see you and marvel."

“You will stay here and remind us always of the ancient, quiet, and strong things that went before us.”

rlp

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