A lot of special experiences make up childhood with grandparents, and undoubtedly, winching trees tops the list.
“You will treasure this day for the rest of your life,” my father proclaimed from his easy chair to the rest of us plopped around the living room of the cottage he had built himself, with help from family and friends. “Just think about it: How many families can say they winched trees together?”
It was the day after my 14-year-old had used the log splitter for the first time. We were on the family property in the Adirondacks Mountains, where days of leisure and adventure are occasionally interspersed with hearty work. Grandma and I and Grandpa and I hefted impossibly heavy sections of tree trunks onto the powerful machine that was manned by my precious delicate little teenager adorned in heavy leather gloves and safety glasses. With the push of a button, she would start the strong wedge moving toward the massive pieces of wood. It would slowly force its way in, and the creaking and cracking would begin. We’d wait with bated breath until the loud “pop” that finally splinted the wood in two as they fell off each side.
That work was tiring and left us short of breath and covered in tiny slivers of wood, and we rested well afterward.
The following day was our last full day at the cottage.
When we arrive there each June, a full week stretches endlessly ahead. There is no agenda, no work or school to go to, no normal household chores, no meetings, no dates. We are suspended in time – back, there in heaven, as if we had never left it. The only way to mark difference is that the child is a little taller and there are a few more gray hairs on the rest of us or perhaps a few fewer hairs, and often, as we joke with our father, there is yet another new cabin or outbuilding he’d built. But the rest is the same, as if the intervening year hadn’t existed – the camaraderie, the pancake breakfasts, the woodland hikes, the gentle greeting of the rising sun in the morning, the warmth and cackle of the campfire at night.
But suddenly, somehow, with intense shock we are stunned to realize we are on the final full day.
That morning, I decided to take out the little trees that soon would be blocking my parents’ view down the fern-covered hill to the pond. We all loved sitting out on that deck, gazing down to the pond, cradling a hot mug of coffee in the mornings or a glass of wine or gin and tonic in the evenings.
After the coffee, I put on my sturdy boots and old clothes and made my way down with a few tools. Some of those saplings which had looked so small from up on the deck were some almost as tall as I was and put up quite a struggle before they released their roots from the rich black soil. My dog occasionally ran down into the water then would run back up to sit companionably near where I was working.
My sister followed soon after, with warnings that this wasn’t her idea of a good time, and she wouldn’t last for long.
Then came Grandma and my daughter, and just after they arrived, my father had circled around down a rudimentary dirt road with his tractor. Things were getting serious; the saplings now didn’t stand a chance, and the view again would be protected for another year or two before this would have to happen again.
While I kept to my shovel and ax, the others tackled with winches. They would attach a strap to a small tree, and anchor the other end to a large tree, and flip, flip, flip the tab of the winch which clicked more and more and more along the strap until it was tight, then tighter, and finally, the smaller tree would give up and pull out.
Hours later, we made our way back up the hill, covered in dirt and hot and sweaty and ready for a cool drink and a break.
There are many special ways a family has of spending time together. Family life is a fabric of threads of luxury and of work, of parties and of projects. And they are all rich in their various ways.
