| TIMETREE CHAPTERS: 1 Two Indians 2 Spring 3 His Brother The Wind 4 The First Years 5 Comings And Goings 6 Another Spring 7 The Great Meeting 8 Alone Yet Not Alone 9 Remembering 10 Tomorrow Gone Home Page |
Once Upon A Time, |
ALONE YET NOT ALONE
The years passed in a collage' of stars, the sun, night and days of clouds forming and disappearing, harvest moons and comets streaking behind forgotten horizons. Many passed the tree by, as they stole along the trail below. The owl and the Yellow Pine watched trappers and hunters sneak quietly along the winding path. Each one imagined that he must be the first man to discover and walk this trail. They all believed that this was only a game trail, but the birds, squirrels, owl and porcupine knew better. They laughed at the manner of passing, of these arrogant, untrusting hunters and trappers.
The remaining lower half of the old father tree had long since slid down the mountain-side. It lay for many years across the trail and finally decayed and dissolved and was no more. The eagles flew to the top of the great, growing Yellow Pine and the woodpeckers also built a home there, far above the owl. It seemed each set of branch levels was an apartment of activity of all sorts of wildlife. Every thing is allowed to stay provided they did not disturb the owl’s rest, during the day. This was difficult when the young woodpeckers needed to visit the wisest bird of the forest. Sometimes the owl was wide awake and accepted visitors during the day. He never lost patience with the children of the forest. Happy years, they were! Where the old, scorched father tree had stood, there was now a small, sunny, open meadow hidden in the forest, high above the Lolo Trail. Elk, deer, and sometimes the Big Horn Sheep bedded down and slept there.
After 1833, plow and planting with machinery began on the prairie to the east, in deadly earnest. John Deere who lived in Moline, Illinois made wooden plows faced with steel, curved for turning over the prairie soil of the area. In 1847, Cyrus McCormick moved to the frontier town of Chicago and invented the machine reaper. The mechanical age was now in full swing. Steel and machinery were heading slowly west.
"The land swells with hungry and greedy people," sighs the wind, bringing the news for 1896. "I have heard strange new words three moons ago. They call it "Electrical Communications." The inventors speak to one another across a gap two miles wide!" The wise old owl and the Yellow Pine tree nod intensely but unsure and discussed this news carefully afterwards.
In 1901, the letter S was transmitted through the air, from England to St Johns, Newfoundland. It had traveled 1800 miles. The tree was 365 seasons old. A lot of time had passed by and she is magnificent to behold!
The Bitter Root Valley was named and the trail is known as the Lolo Pass Trail . The beautiful valley had been formed by a great glacier some believe still exists deep below the gravel floor of the valley, upon which the Bitterroot River flows. Mining and trapping men continue to travel the trail, journeying through the Rocky Mountains toward the Pacific Ocean. Baseball is invented. In 1915, the Lusitania liner was torpedoed off the Irish coast. In 1917, the USA enters into World War I, and many brave soldiers die in the war. Then again, as in a repeating nightmare, World War II arrived and departed, and many more soldiers fall upon the earth. The Bitter Root Valley becomes populated and developed, yet the great Yellow Pine tree still stands high and is the mighty Monarch of the Mountains. When the President was assassinated in 1985, the tree began to recall many other tragic events of the past, but it was the tree’s 420th birthday, and she is still hale and hearty.
In 1985, the ancientYellow Pine Timetree was strong and tall, yet—doomed.
| TIMETREE CHAPTERS: 1 Two Indians 2 Spring 3 His Brother The Wind 4 The First Years 5 Comings And Goings 6 Another Spring 7 The Great Meeting 8 Alone Yet Not Alone 9 Remembering 10 Tomorrow Gone Home Page |
Once Upon A Time, |
