Spoonwood (30 page)

6

TIME

W
hen Katharine Ramchand arrived at the mansion she found Missy Mendelson watching TV in the family room. The children ran to her. Through the French doors Katharine could see Latour and Birch splitting firewood. In the winter they closed off most of the house to save on heat, congregating in two rooms—a large eat-in kitchen and the library, converted into a family room with stereo system, television, and a “play” section for the little ones. Latour had installed a Vermont Castings wood stove insert in the fireplace. Though he'd never spent a night in the Salmon house with her, he was good with the children, taking them for long walks in the woods, talking to them, teaching them. His ability to mesmerize them sometimes frightened her. He held entirely different views of childraising than her, but he never criticized her more traditional methods. He simply subverted them with his charm and persistence. She hoped that eventually the children would sort the best from both their worlds.

Katharine paused for a moment before taking her coat off, and when she did her mind recorded a short mental video of the proceedings. The images were so vivid that she knew they would remain in her memory for retrieval at any time. Her children
had joined Missy, and the three of them were all tangled up in each other as they watched a women's basketball game on television. Outside, Birch chucked round wood from a pile to his father, who caught it and ran it through the power splitter. A father and son dance. Suddenly, the rhythm of their labors broke. Latour held up a hand just as Birch was going to toss him a log. Birch put the log down. Latour bent and picked up a piece of wood recently created by the splitter, a crude but recognizable spoon shape. Latour handed the piece to Birch, who studied it for a moment. Father and son then engaged in conversation, serious and intimate from the look on their faces. Finally, Latour took the spoon shape from Birch and set it aside and they went back to work. The image that remained embedded in Katharine's mind was of Latour's hand, Birch's hand, the wood, for a moment all touching, a unity, like that painting that Latour kept in his work wigwam in the woods. The spoon, the hands, the bodies, the feet on the ground, the ground itself, the earth's shifting crust—she melted it and fused it in the heat-flux of her mind.

THE FUTURE

Who can say whether Birch Latour and his cohorts save the World, or even the Salmon Forest Trust Conservancy? Who can say whether Latour will be a good father to his children with Katharine Ramchand? Who can say where these people and this land fit into a world order or even whether there will be a world order? The forest might be cut down, houses built, and shopping centers established along with streets and streetlights. Or the trust charter might hold, and the mixed hardwood forest might continue to reign with the beaver, the bear, the deer, and the mysterious coyote. Or the climate might change and the trees vanish. The ice age might return and completely transform the landscape, even the rocks. Upon the retreat of the ice outcasts from other nations might settle here, call it their own. One can only imagine:

A surveyor, perhaps, is planting a stake, or a backhoe operator is dislodging a boulder, or, better yet, lovers on a picnic are looking for a place to lay their blanket, when an object attracts their attention. A time capsule has pushed its way up into the soil. They open it to find a beautifully carved wooden spoon, along with a few pages of explanation—unsigned.

SPOONWOOD DOCUMENT: Apple Tree History

Let me start with a little history, derived from archives available at the local public library, mixed in with some guesswork and—dare I admit it?—wishing.

In 1780 a New England farmer planted some apple trees. He chose the north slope, which would remain cool in the spring, thus retarding the blossoms from blooming. He believed that late blossoms, besides being less susceptible to a late frost, would produce juicier apples. He planted the twenty-five trees in rows of five, thirty feet apart. The farmer started an orchard at the insistence of his wife, who, like himself, was worried about their eldest son, who had gone off to fight in the war for independence. For some reason she thought the orchard would please the Almighty who would respond by protecting their son.

Fifty years later the son of the original homesteader was widowed in the fall of the year. He walked out into his orchard, a noggin of cider in his hand. He stared out at the trees and field and wondered what his life was all about. The next year he approached his son. “You can have the farm,” he said. In return he asked that he be allowed to live out his years in his sacred home. The son turned him down. The old farmer offered the place to his three daughters, one after the other, according to their ages. They respectfully declined. His oldest daughter insisted he move in with her at her home in Boston. He declined. The next year he sold the farm, moved in with another daughter in Keene, and died the following spring.

The new owner of the farm was very ambitious. He added to the house, built a new barn, cleared more fields for sheep. He
pruned the apple trees for productivity. The farm thrived, but the farm couple's eldest son was reported missing in the Civil War. They were never sure whether he deserted or was killed.

By the standards of his place and time, the farmer died rich, and his heirs squabbled over ownership of his property, because he wrote several wills over a period of thirty years. In the end, the farm was divided up among six children, two of whom sold their lots to a party not in the family but who married into the family. The family expanded into a clan. They lived in less than grand circumstances. Most of the landowners worked in town and half-farmed their property. Some of the fields start growing in with woods. The orchard remained tended, more or less. The apples were wormy, but that didn't bother the cidermakers. Some of the trees died, but they were replaced by cuttings from live trees, so perhaps the trees didn't die after all. People are born and die one time each, but trees sometimes go on and on, new life sprouting from the dead. Two gods or perhaps two manifestations of one God inhabit each tree, one in the dark of the earth in search of water and nutrients, the other in the air in search of light and energy. The God-Manifests communicate through the exchange of bodily fluids.

Around 1910 members of the clan, like a chain of firecrackers going off, sold their small lots to a wealthy family from Massachusetts. The clan shacks were torn down. The dirt roads were transformed into bridle paths, for the new owners liked to ride their horses across hill and dale. Meanwhile, the forest grew relentlessly. What a hundred years before had been cultivated fields was now woods. An exception was the pasture where the orchard rested. The estate owner kept it mowed, though the trees were untended. The apples were deemed bitter and wormy, and the trees had gotten too big and the branches were too high to allow apples to be picked easily.

In 1930 the estate owner suffered financial setbacks. He died, it was said, from a broken heart. His heirs loved their New England property, but they no longer had the money to keep up the land and pay the taxes. By 1970, the orchard had been completely abandoned. The current owner, apparently pumped up
with new money (on this point the records are fuzzy), had a different idea for his property, a land trust based on conservancy principles.

When I arrived on the scene I found the orchard overgrown, mainly by young pine trees. Most of the apple trees were dead or dying. I was terribly upset by the sight of these apple trees being slowly strangled to death. I spent the next year reviving the orchard at the expense of the pines. The activity was my passion, the place my church. I was too zealous with some of the trees, and their sudden exposure to sunlight killed them. Some were already too far gone to renew. Others had died long ago, and only their skeletons stood. But a few responded to my care. On the day I write these words, a half dozen apple trees thrive.

I have plans for my son and me: make cider, make pies, eat the apples raw. Do it now, I tell myself, for I expect to leave this land. One is always leaving the places one loves. We make do with memory. From my pruning cuts I've made spoons. In each spoon is a little bit of the history of this land.

You can't find spoons with scrutiny. The spoon finds you when you are least suspicious. Creativity is difficult for me because I am a suspicious person. One morning around 5
AM
in a lurid dawn I took my infant son outside to see the sunrise. I'd completely forgotten about some apple tree branches I'd brought in from my orchard. I noticed one now, wet at my feet, and in that glance I saw into the wood with x-ray vision. Inside was a spoon.

I yanked the branch up. I lost heart for a moment because at the new angle the branch showed no promise. I persisted, cutting it with my bow saw, placing the piece in my shaving horse vise, and stripping the bark with my draw knife. Once the bare wood was revealed the spoon that I saw appeared again in my vision in template.

I cut the spoonwood from the branch, leaving the piece a little longer than the intended spoon. With a hewing hatchet I roughed out the shape of the spoon. (I love my hewing hatchet. I keep it sharp enough to hone the points on my pencils, with which I write these notes.) I continued refining the shape with the draw
knife, following the natural grain of the wood. I worked in great confidence and certainty. I don't say this in vanity but in humility, but for it was not from me that the vision for this object came but from a higher power.

I hollowed the bowl with a homemade crooked knife. Sometimes I use a spoon gouge to make the bowls, but the crooked knife is faster and better for shallow spoons (and most spoons should be shallow), and I enjoy the motion of my wrist in using it. Also, the crooked knife is an invention of the Native Americans in my region of the North Country, and in using it I can reach back in time to some ancient spoonmaker and hear the tiny slices of his knife.

I put on a coat of my special finishing oil, which will harden over time. Next day I smoothed out some rough spots brought out by the oil. I used glass for smoothing, some of it curved for the bowls. I have never cut myself with a knife, but I have with the glass, and so it happened that day. A trickle of blood stained the handle. I decided to leave it on because I liked the shape of the stain.

The next day I oiled the spoon again, and again the following day, and so forth for six more days until I had a suitable apple wood serving spoon. Every time I touched the spoon I thought about the desperate apple tree it came from. It had a little more freedom to grow, to live. Today I leave my offering, this spoon and these words.