Living in the Strength of Trees

We always say - half in seriousness, half joking - that the two age old cottonwoods that stand so firmly in our front yard, will someday be the eventual demise of our house.

They're 90-some years old and that many years around. We've found roots from those trees all the way in the back yard - roots that have grown either through or under the foundation of the house. But as certain as we are that we'll be gone before the house is, we would never think of trying to repair or disturb a single one of those fractures - evidence of the time it has taken our house to settle on the roots of those old trees. The river rock foundation - the work of someone long ago, who so carefully selected each stone and its placement - adjusting as needed. I've always known in my heart that the roots of those trees were what protected us, what made our house so strong.

Those two trees, with their loving arms, have embraced our roofline for years. One of them are prominent in a photograph we have of our house, taken around 1932. A young man, Jack Wilson is his name, stands with his father by one of the cottonwoods. He is a strapping young adult - dressed in the manner of the day. The same porch swing hangs on the west end of the massive porch, and a leaning trellis is supporting the wild rose that still grows there today.

The cottonwoods were already too big for where they sit - so close to the house. They're bigger around than Jack, already then, and their long branches have begun their journey towards the second story windows. In the photo, the trees' roots had not yet begun to tip the ground or form their long tentacles in the grass - heaving the soil as they do now. But you can see that they are firmly established - as well as you can see the roots of the family living in the house in the faces of Jack and his dad.

We knew, too, that this house was the house that would suit our lives. We knew that we would embrace this home as fervently through the years as those trees embrace the house. It would be where my daughter would finish school, in the gardens surrounding the house where she would marry. It would be where we would plan a future. It was where we were supposed to be.

The first day we owned the house, now 22 years ago, we ordered pizza to be delivered to our new address and we all sat in each room, one room at a time, and felt what is was going to be like to live there.

We also explored the barn that sat on the north end of the property, boarded up for years, listing heavily to one side - surrounded by fields and fields of weeds. My husband's curiosity had been peaked from the first time we'd seen the old place as to what stories that old barn had to tell. But until it was ours, he felt unable to rip away any of the layers of its history to investigate.

We know now that it was Jack Wilson, the young man in the photo, who built the barn and started a small dairy in it. His father, he told us when we met - he and his wife on a Sunday drive, spotting new owners in the old place - his father had been a traveling salesman for most of Jack's life, and Jack missed him when he was on the road. So, he figured, if he started this dairy - his dad could stay home and help him run it.

And eventually he did - they had about 36 cows and a milkhouse, which no longer stands, where they had a steam boiler to clean and sterilize equipment. At their best, Jack said, they delivered 700 quarts a day, at 10 cents per quart. They also did a stellar apple harvest, using the cellar under the main room of the barn for storing the apples that grew rampant in the fields around the property. They started hauling them by the truckload to Montana and, by 1936, Jack and his father had started a produce business together, moving the whole family to Kalispell.

We didn't know any of this on our first afternoon of owning our house and our barn, some 50 years later. But we had suspected the presence of a cellar under the barn and we squatted down, that day, to the foundation and tore at the rotten boards. Sure enough, there was a window frame - the glass covered with years of soot. By lying flat, we could see through a large crack to the shadowy outlines of a room.

And I do remember the faint smell of apples.

My husband might say that that was the day he began his task for life - his master, the house, its repair and upkeep his mission for the rest of his days. But I know it has all been done with loving hands - for the house and for the barn, for all the days passed and for all to come. Like Jack, we've made our living in the barn, our lives in the house.

At night, in the wind, the branches of our cottonwood trees ache in the moonlight, their fingers tickling the windows panes - and we are reminded that we, for certain, are as firmly planted in this house as those trees are in the yard. Our roots help sustain that which is dear to us.