An Emotional Cleansing As You Pick Up The Broken Limbs And Put Them In The Back Of The Truck, You Realize The Healing Has Begun

The color inside the pines is the color of turkey breast and new apple cores. You think about that because your mind is wandering; hard work does that to the mind. You drag tree parts close to your pickup. You wear gloves so you won’t scratch your hands and so you can work faster.

You lop all the branches from the tree’s spine, or at least those on two sides so the logs will stack better in the truck. You want a compact load so more will fit and so it won’t blow or bounce out on the freeway if you lose your tarp. You lop off limbs, two inches in diameter, even three. You keep biting away at them.

If a limb is already dead, it slices easily. If you’re lopping live limbs you smell the sap. If human blood smelled this good the world would have more ax murders. There goes your mind again. No censor in sight.

You bend your knees to pick up a log. Saves the back. You stand the log up in your gloved palms and topple it into the truck, a Scotsman’s caber toss, a trial of strength. You lean the next log on the open tailgate. You step on the corner of the bumper, rise onto the tailgate, bend your knees and pull the log into the bed of the pickup.

You climb down and stoop to gather the lopped branches. You throw them toward the cab of the truck because you want to fill your load efficiently. You keep piling logs and branches. One ton of them, if you load it right.

The pine needles, green bundles, look like chimney sweep brushes. Sweeping chimneys — now there’s a dirty, thankless job. You think about that a minute, still muscling logs, then you work without your brain a while. You experience it with your arms, your breath, your cough, your legs. You’re grateful for a breeze.

You think of the urgency of the November ice storm that knocked these pines to their knees. You pull off your gloves and check the scar you got from hot candle wax when the electricity went out, or the whitened warped fingernails now growing back to normal on the hand you pinched closing the garage door. The ice storm’s little reminders. Healing.

Some medicine hurts before it heals. That was the ice storm. You were going along just fine, all your goals and plans chugging along, when the trees crashed and the power died. You felt vulnerable. You admitted you’d have made a lousy pioneer. You got down to basics, like hot water and matches and what time the sun set. You helped your neighbors and they helped you.

That ice storm, that medicine, is still inside you. Like a death in the family, it left shattered stumps. It bites away at you, but it makes you stronger.

You think of the old Southern sculptor you heard on the radio who said art is therapy, who said, “I don’t want the psychologists to get mad at me, but you don’t always need to go to the doctor to relieve your mind. You can do it yourself baking a cake.”

You think about Zen monks reaching mindlessness through their chores. Chop wood. Carry water.

You fill the truck until it’s a heaping tablespoon of pine sap and needles. You pull the tarp over the top and secure it, crossing the yellow rope in a tight X over the load, wrapping the ends around the back bumper and tying them off. You drive to the incinerator, joining other slow-moving pickups in the right-hand lane climbing Sunset Hill. Blue tarps and brown tarps hold firm or flap themselves free. You follow a truck. A right turn. Signs, arrows, men in orange point you to your place.

You back up beside a green pickup upon whose back two men stand tossing branches and logs into the wind. Bulldozers crank and roar. The machines sound like carnival rides as they flatten the acres of debris. Sap smells different here, fermented, sour, but alive. You work together with the others who ride the row of pickups, doing the job, the cleanup.

Smiling now, you head home for another load, another dose of ice storm medicine.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: Former Spokesman-Review staff writer Carla K. Johnson is a freelance writer, parent and school volunteer living in Spokane.

This sidebar appeared with the story: STORMY AFTERMATH The Inland Northwest’s now infamous ice storm hit almost six months ago. Hard to believe it today, Bloomsday, as thousands of us celebrate spring’s arrival with this annual run that has become ritual. Sometimes, nature’s shaking up of the status quo has longlasting consequences in our lives. We are looking for stories about any long-term affects of ice storm. Did you decide to leave the Inland Northwest for warmer climates? Did you sell your home, divorce your spouse, get married, have a child, plunge into (or out of) a depression as a result of ice storm? Or was the aftermath more subtle? Maybe you finally decided to tackle that novel you’ve put on hold. Or look up an old friend. Let us know. Write: Ice Storm Aftermath. The Spokesman-Review Newsroom. P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615. Or fax the information to (509) 459-5098. Or e-mail Rebeccan@spokesman.com. Please include your full name, address and daytime phone number.