ROOT BALL

     Mom's trillium are in bloom, in spite of a recent cold snap. Looking at them gives me hope in the face of #stayhome. I imagine their pre-virus life at my brother's lake home between Hackensack and Longville. 
     This lake home, aka the cabin, was his retirement dream.  My brother was the kind of a guy who had lots of plans in spite of the undeniable fact that his biological dad died instantly of a massive coronary at 45. And even though my big brother was overweight, deconditioned and smoked 3 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day, he was convinced he would spend his golden years sitting in his fishing boat with a ice cold beer and a BLT. 
    Mike re-invented himself as an ER nurse shortly after he turned 60, so he could work part-time in Arizona while living with my snowbird Dad during the winter. He planned to spend summers at his cabin until a particularly nasty motorcycle accident killed him.  Sometimes death is instantaneous, but not for Mike.  Life support kept his body alive until a week after the accident. There was no brain activity after a week of strokes.  The machines were disconnected.

      Hiking Wita Tanka last month was like strolling through a neglected cemetery. The deadwood, and the unmistakeable evidence of recent flooding isn't easy to ignore. Yet the island is home to numerous creatures thriving among the skeletons of trees. That is one of the many the truths regarding death: it nurtures life. And the trees, which appear so hopelessly deceased in March, far beyond revival, were merely dormant. 
     On my last visit, leaves had begun to appear reflecting the early Spring sunlight. The rivers, glistening like diamonds, had receded unveiling the corpses of the trees which had not survived the high water.  

Yet, I saw seedlings sprouting from the dense rich dirt clinging to the massive root ball of a dead, very mature tree.