The Tree That Never Was

The Odyssey of White Fir

Will a scrawny seedling’s determination and courage be enough to deal with greedy cousins and the gimlet eye of quality control as White Fir survives a brutal harvest only to face almost certain destruction?

Printed in color with photographs on every page.

Book Excerpt

It was hard right from the beginning.

We were no more than sprouts when they began planting all my brothers and sisters as one huge family randomly plugged into the ground among all the old stumps of our ancestors.  We didn’t have much then in the way of roots.  We had even less in the way of branches and needles and while we were all skinny and not much to look at, I was by far the skinniest.  Germinated in the far back corner of the nursery, they often forgot to water or feed me.  I was so thin I could hardly stand up and there were more hours in the day than there were needles on my one little emaciated branch.

“Don’t bother planting that one,” advised the one supervising the planting.  “That scrawny little white fir ain’t worth the trouble digging a hole.”

And with that the one holding me tossed me aside where I landed near a distant cousin three times my height and girth.  I knew right then that my chances of surviving let alone growing into anything useful were not very good.

“You’ll never make it,” said the distant cousin.  “Give up and die.”

“No,” I said, “they told us to grow and grow I will. Just watch.  I am going to grow to be something beautiful and useful.”

“Not on my water,” he said flexing his muscular roots, “and not on my sunshine,” he added waving his needled head to put me in the shade.  “Besides, none of us are destined for much anyway. The way I hear it, we won’t have time to grow up slowly to become thick and strong like our giant ancestors with hundreds and hundreds of growth rings packed beneath their stippled skins. That’s why they crowd us so, to make us all stretch as hard as we can for our share of sunshine.  Forget about growing long and graceful branches dappled with little cones and fans of soft green needles.  All that matters here is height and that you don’t got.”

So years later when the timber cruisers came through, I was still…