Tall, Straight Sisters

Abstract

Tall, Straight Sisters Jessica Lind Peterson (bio) A tree is not a metaphor. A tree is a tree, and we are both only one strong wind away from falling. –Angela Pelster, Limber It is cold as I walk behind him on the trail. But not the kind of cold that shakes you, that steals your breath and turns it into haze. No, the good kind. The kind of cold that awakens and sharpens you and helps you breathe just a little bit better. As we walk, weightless yellow leaves fall softly overhead like a gentle confetti. We are quiet. The leaves are quiet. Only the birds are having their say. We came here to these Northwoods, these winding groves of birch and poplar, because we had to. This is where we met and fell in love: here in this friendly cold, here in this earthy smell, where we first saw each other and loved each other, under this wide net of glistening branches. Fifteen years ago we made love here and made plans here; the gnarled roots of these very trees dug into our backs, the sharp grass leaving a happy rash across my thighs. [End Page 7] But we are not happy now, and today is not for making love. We have run here, the two of us, to these well-known trees, desperate for the healing they might bring. More finished leaves fall quietly to the earth. Ahead of me my husband tramples the newly fallen leaves with his hiking boots and I think of his hands in her hair and wonder if he touched her face the way he touches mine, one hand spread open against a cheek, his fingers slowly tracing her lips. I stop on the trail and double over. It is too much for me, this knowing. I am a good wife, I think. I am a pretty wife. Suddenly I want to be spread thin on the decaying forest floor. I want to be the leaf and seep into the dirt and moss and be forgotten and reborn again next spring, a fresh and quiet green unfurling for the first time. But I am not a leaf and this is not a leaf story. A lonely, aching howl erupts from my mouth and stops the birds. I rest my back against a small birch tree and she holds my weight without protest like a tall, straight sister. I think about the birch trees on the North Shore and how they are dying by the thousands. Their bare, forsaken trunks lean together in giant clusters along Highway 61, a silent choir of lifeless wood. No one understands what is happening to them. I read somewhere that a tree can be dying from the inside for many years before showing any sign of disease. A beetle or a parasite will eat away at it, laying its eggs and leaving entire colonies of itself behind, slowly poisoning and suffocating it. Sometimes a tree can fight them off by pushing its own sap through the tunnels they dig or by temporarily cutting off its own water supply in an attempt to drive the invaders out. You wouldn’t know a fierce battle was taking place inside, you wouldn’t look long enough at a tree to know that. But sometimes a tree is not strong enough. Sometimes a tree cannot fight back and the beetles get in and have their way. No one knows of the blackened rot inside until it is cut open. The trail begins to open up and I see the pale blue beginnings of Lake Superior in the distance. Not far below this line of trees is the church where my husband and I were married in West Duluth. A sweet little house of worship with wood paneling and forest green carpet, [End Page 8] the same church where my mom and dad had gotten married, where I had been baptized as a baby. My grandmother still plays in the bell choir there, still organizes the church rummage sale every summer, the lutefisk dinner every Christmas. It still smells faintly of old coffee and meatballs. Five years after our wedding, the pastor who...