The Oak-a-Dope Report

by Robert Hill Cox

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Yes, brown plastic leaf bags flash before my eyes. Brown plastic leaf bags sufficiently translucent to show some of the faces of all the dead white presidents crammed inside. I tell Mr. Stewart straight up the feasibility study alone will set him back fifty thousand dollars.

One moonlit evening, I stop by the Oak. Sometimes a tree will give you a feeling, a sense of what it wants. I go up to the trunk. I pry a piece of bark off. I shine my phone and see ants marching underneath. It is a depressed, unhappy tree. Maybe the tree is sick and tired of just sitting in this damp hollow for four hundred years, now enduring the extra insult of having to inhale exhaust from a busy road. Maybe change will be good.

Or maybe a move will be a coup de grâce. Sometimes you do have to put a tree down, like the family dog. What I tell people is any tree is a being of supreme indifference; what matters is not whether it continues to thrive but whether you continue to thrive in its presence. Usually, we learn from these giant, easy-going neighbors — elephants too polite to shit, fart, or trumpet — so you always want to err on the side of keeping them.

Just as I press my knife down hard to check the condition of the cambium layer, a big bird settles on a limb against the very dark blue sky. It gathers itself into a fluffy egg. One eye catches a patch of moonlight. A great horned owl. I take that as a yes.

* * *

Every feasibility study says no. We’ll have to build a Noah’s ark of a box to carry the roots — a vessel best measured in cubits. We’ll have to dig a pit in front of the house for the replanting that is eight feet deep and thirty feet square. Unfortunately, the soil at the top is thin. We’ll need to blast. Also, the ground is irregularly sloped; on the downhill side we’ll need to build a six-foot retaining wall.

Then we’ll have to cut a half dozen trees down by the stream and build a bridge capable of holding a thousand tons and what is essentially an unpaved four-lane highway up to the house. We can’t drag the tree up along the natural contours: at one point the ground slopes enough for the tree to topple over. I calculate we’ll need seventeen truckloads of dirt to build this temporary ramp.

I dread my meetings with Mr. Stewart. We haven’t signed anything, and I’m sure he’ll chicken out — just running the pipe I’d need for adequate irrigation is going to set him back $156,000.

His left eyelid twitches when he hears such figures, but he nods his consent.

A “stop the tree steal” campaign crops up. A petition circulates. An easement on the property states that the big oak must never be cut down “unless it poses a hazard to human life” but is silent on the question of a move. Half of the community believes Mr. Stewart is like a pervert buying the Mona Lisa for his personal amusement. The other half views the tree as an old road hazard best eliminated. At a town meeting, Bruce comes through as my expert witness, explaining the tree is showing signs of stress and the move to better light might do it good.

The motion is defeated. Mr. Steward signs contracts. Behind Mr. Steward’s back, Bruce and I call the project names like “Birnam Woods” and “Oak-a-Dope.”

Quickly it becomes clear I won’t be doing as well as I’d hoped. I subcontract blasting to Harry Dasher, who has experience blowing up rock to build swimming pools. Unfortunately, one of his charges cracks the house foundation, leading to a flurry of lawsuits.

We run a pipe system along the ramp that can deliver the eight hundred gallons of water a minute I need to keep the roots wet. I book a crane with ten times the capacity of my ArboMax; it will come on three flatbed trucks and the minimum two-week rental will be $130,000. I lease five John Deere 9R tractors at a mere $8,400 each per week.

Mr. Stewart and I meet weekly. I explain we’ll be removing the ramp as soon as we are done. But I worry it will take years for that side of the hill to recover.

Mr. Stewart never complains. He says he quite likes the bustle of the dump trucks and graders as we build the ramp — he feels like he’s constructing a great pyramid or ziggurat. But as the big day approaches, his mood sours. The tree will be a trophy tree, like hanging a kudu head in the dining hall and claiming he shot it in Connecticut, he says. And he’s right.

* * *

By late March, the ground has thawed. It’s best to move a tree pre-leaf. If they’re busy growing leaves, the shock of the move can lead to all the leaf buds falling off, like a person losing their hair from a terrible fright. We have to move quickly before spring rain stirs dull roots. We build the big box and get the crane.

I climb the tree myself to attach the straps and position the hoisting yokes, clip in the cables, put in the two dozen crutches to keep the long, gangly limbs from swaying so much that they snap off.

Then I crawl into the Verdun-deep trench we’ve dug around the roots and start slicing. Not as dangerous as a glacier crevasse, but close.

We hoist the tree on a Saturday, so the people of Fairlawn can participate.

You hear it’s strange to see a fish out of water. How about a whale?

I hear someone say it’s like the hanging tree itself is getting hanged.

As it comes out, basketballs of dirt tumble from the roots, as do rocks, spiders, beetles, boulders, moles, several very surprised woodchucks, and one sleepy-eyed, naked-tailed opossum. The crown blacks out the sun. I am the magician David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear. Archimedes levering the Earth. We lift the tree high enough to clear the sides of the root box. Sixteen workers tug on ropes keeping it straight. It’s a thousand-ton Thanksgiving Day balloon.

It settles into the box. Now it needs a week of recovery and a lot of water before the move up the hill.

Mr. Stewart is unreachable. The subprime mortgage market collapses. I gather soap is a slippery business prone to bubbles.

On moving day we hold a big community picnic, though rain is forecast for the late afternoon. We’ll be going no faster than two feet per minute. The roar of five John Deere 9R tractors on max pull makes conversation impossible.

Very few people are there for the replanting.

As soon as the tree is in its hole, I put on spikes and climb. I attach what I suppose reflects some unease about my standing with the gods. The Trowbridge Oak is now the tallest point around for several miles. I install a lightning rod.

The clouds pile up. The crane operator breaks down his jib. A strike flashes down, makes the lightening rod spark and briefly sizzle, and we find ourselves laughing and dancing in the rain.

Bruce brings out champagne from coolers in the back of his truck. We swig from the bottles.

The next morning, Mr. Stewart files for bankruptcy. The Trowbridge place — that is “Balamore” — goes so cheap in a bank auction that Bruce, of all people, can afford to buy it.

Bruce will be staying put for a while. Until a tree sneaks a finger of root through his foundation and taps his pipe for a little sip of water.