Local arborist fights for free speech, right to a free death

Who knows what will hold in that moment between the last green shadow of sun spinning through a ponderosa bough and then cutting into one’s iris before the last heave of our own human respiration? One Spokane tree man, master of the branches and many things arboreal, has already thrown himself a wake with a cast of 150 characters, food, flowing micro-brew ale and Cuban salsa group Milango. “I’m still shocked that so many decent people came out and said so many kind things about me,” Dan Treecraft said. “I was dumfounded that anyone would compare me to Jesus, in that he transformed death into love whereas I am transforming death into play,” Treecraft said, reminding me why a tongue cancer operation – which usually extends one’s life a few months – is out of the question. It’s about splitting the jaw, cutting out the tongue through the neck, and complete disfigurement and loss of speech. “I laughed when I Googled glossectomy. Can you imagine yourself, Haeder, without your tongue? Living without your speech?” Treecraft easily transitions into railing against the broken health care system our country holds to, one that would steal away tens of thousands of dollars for a procedure he believes may prolong his life for a few more months of agony. He doesn’t want to leave his wife Jan hurdled with bills, an empty retirement account, or pathetic memories of an incontinent wasting away husband. That’s why he has his tank of helium and bottle of OxyContin ready. While we talked about trees, dead-wooding, the entire clear-cutting of large swaths of Spokane, which gets his goat big time, Treecraft brought up a Martin Luther King, Jr., quote: “The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.” In many ways, the evolutionist and social justice aficionado sees his stepfather Bob Bouck as a testament to a good life lived as the “white god” of La Push, Wash. Dan calls seven Quileute Tribe members his half-brothers. Talking with Treecraft in his South Hill backyard, I’ve learned how he made his own compact with life – his own quickening slide into death with a malignant tongue tumor “the size of a ping pong ball and predicted to grow,” and what it means to be a master of his own fate. The narrative went from Fresno, Calif, to Florida, then Bainbridge Island, Wash., and then to Spokane. Treecraft talked about travel in the Coast Guard and his past – grandparents from Popular Branch, N.C., and Atchison, Kans., and a grandfather coming to California in 1910 looking for a grub stake in life. While Dan (Whipple is his birth name) knew something was up more than a year ago when he swallowed, felt pain and couldn’t shake sore throat-like symptoms, he wasn’t officially diagnosed with an aggressive form of tongue cancer until eight months ago. Treecraft created a stage name shortly after trying his hand at pruning trees in Spokane after throwing in at any number of labor jobs, including building wine tanks out of redwood staves. He turned his business logo to Treecraft Arboreal Arts and changed his name to Treecraft more than 19 years ago. What’s amazing about Treecraft is he’s picked up hundreds of clients who have called him friend, advisor, and political ally. What he knows about trees he picked up from a retired railroad guy and then most deeply from Rich Baker, an arborist known as the “God of Pines” in this neck of the woods. “I just got more ambitious and eventually found myself 60 feet up in a tree with one hand on a branch and the other one clutched to a saw. I knew I was way over my head after dangling six stories from a tree not knowing really what the hell I was doing,” he said. His biggest fear in this cancer journey is bleeding out and suffocating after swallowing his tongue, or aspirating blood. His wife Jan is along for Treecraft’s palliative journey now, a pathway that includes figuring when the time will come to do himself in. That day hasn’t been too far off all summer long, according to Dan. The plan is to have Julie Smith, a great harpist and certified music thanatologist, and others around him. He’d like to hear bagpipes, maybe “Mister Sandman” played. While Dan’s life has been characterized by social justice, struggle against neo-conservatives, and his own place as a professional arborist in a field that is at times ethically challenged, he in many ways self-identifies as an evolutionist and atheist. The music vigil he plans when “that day comes” will help his own end-of-life physiology and family members and friends surrounding him. Treecraft supports Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s assisted suicide ethos and agrees with Kevorkian’s empowerment of individuals to mark their own time. “The patient’s autonomy always, always should be respected, even if it is absolutely contrary to best medical advice and what the physician wants,” Kevorkian said. Dan gained local notoriety June 27, 2007, when he was arrested protesting U.S. policy on torturing suspects. It was at the West-Central Community Center when then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez came to defend water-boarding and renditions. Treecraft has spoken out against Spokane Police Department brutality, and favors more teeth in the Spokane police ombudsman’s bite. What strikes a chord for many is Dan’s continual support of a vibrant urban forest and his admonition of the tree landscaping industry’s persistence toward “ripping off unsuspecting customers.” Dan talked about tough-as-nails great-grandmothers, grandmothers and his own mother, who was age 75 in 1995 while working as quartermaster of the Spokane ferry in Puget Sound. Our conversation journeyed back to Native American shamanism. The Quileute custom of paddling the dead out to sea is more to Dan’s liking. One of his half-brothers was at Dan’s June 5 wake, “drumming and hooting and rattling and singing a yarn about taking the spirit out to sea.” For Dan, the music thanatologist, and observers, that sea will be a hillside flooded with Douglas fir, ponderosa pine and the waning peacock blue of lupine. Maybe with a bagpiper blowing Danny Boy into the wind.