One of my favorite baristas (don’t worry, Trin; there are only two), saw me without Cedar recently and asked, “Cedar taking the day off?” Well, after a morning when we heard our first “hooter” (grouse) and a woodpecker in addition to the usual trail music, I did give her the morning off, so I could ski. 

“Hard mornings, soft afternoons” isn’t just a sneak peek into a middle-aged man’s future, it’s the state of the state lately in spring ski conditions and a quote from a recent trail report. 

Sorry, Cedar, had a sweet time without you. And I even had a guilty chuckle while driving and listening to Louden Wainright’s “Dump the Dog.” 

Take heart, Cedar-fans. We had a nice misty morning and our afternoon will more than likely be the best kind of Cedar-soft: water, sand, other dogs, and a tennis ball. 

I’m just old enough to remember when having a solid state t.v. was cool. No more vacuum tubes, which meant your set didn’t have to warm up. Turn it on, and the image appears. (I do remember the cool mysterious blue dot that would linger on the older kind as the image disappeared when we turned the t.v. off.) I recall a pull-out and push-in knob for power, and a mechanical dial with numbers on it for channel selection. 

That’s an awfully long warm-up (get it?) to laugh at how quickly Cedar can turn her body on and off. Here she is in “OFF” mode on the way home from Sandy Beach yesterday. The second we hit the driveway, of course, it’s a solid state Ping. She’s ready to go again and it’s as if the exercise no longer counts. What’s next?

In fairness to Cedar, she does have her vacuum tube moments, but that’s a different physics spectacle: meal time. 

One of my favorite early parenting memories is Tim, up in his room doing something involved, half-listening to an Alaska Public Radio story set in Chicken, Alaska, and calling out in his laconic voice to Katie. “Kaaaaatie. There’s a place called Chicken and a place called Turkey.”

Well, in that same spirit, I’m here to tell you there’s a thing called “heart rot” and a thing called “butt rot.” You knew that probably. But like me, you might not have been totally aware of the tree version (especially the hemlock version), and you might also not have known the crazy mix of forestry terms they chum around with. There are also things called conks and cankers and frost cracks and black knots and scars and old wounds.

This is probably a good point to issue an anthropomorphism warning. 

As in, like who doesn’t have old wounds? And, did you know that they (along with conks) are the principal entry points for heart rot? Heart rot can take many forms — depending on extent of travel inside the tree, from butt rot to bole rot. Hemlocks are particularly susceptible, I guess, because of how much moisture they draw. Much depends on what kind of rot (white — wood still maybe usable—or brown—forget it), and what kinds of fungus enter one’s wounds.  Rot can be “white spongy” or “mottled” or “rusty red stringy” depending on whether one has “Fomes foot” or “shoestring” or “Indian paint”.  If you can stomach the rapacious point of view of the US Forest Service, this piece is a good primer on heart rot in western hemlocks.

I mention all of this today in part because I’ve been noticing how many blowdowns are around, broken off up about a third of their height, and in part I guess because, well, yeah, anthropomorphism. As I was taking a few photos this morning, a notice popped up on my phone “World Hurtling to Climate Danger Zone.” Last week, I lost a friend, Jason, to what I guess you could call lung rot. And I thought of my father, Paul, and the kids’ mom Ali, who both succumbed to their own versions of heart rot.

I don’t know if it helps much to realize how many of the trees around me are inflicted with heart rot, and yet doing their thing, reaching for the sky. It does help to know Cedar is completely immune to anthropomorphism, and that she finds lots to contentedly chew on in the presence of all the kinds of rot. 

I have a funny little ritual where I stop at the biggest tree on our walk and take a few meditative breaths. I treat the “eagle tree” (a “wolf tree” actually) like my oracle, seeing what word it will give me as I stop and let my mind drift a bit with my breaths (always to the sound of Cedar gnawing good wood). Today, the spruce oracle (a veteran of heart rot, I’m sure) gave me “aspire.” 

Seems like the best cure for heart rot I can conjure. (I’ll leave butt rot for the specialists.)