The Woods Back Home

February 4, 2025
Tom Poland

By Tom Poland

 

Heart Pine Heartbreak

I grew up in a simple house. My parents built it in 1947. In the early 50s we kids had chores and among mine was cutting grass. I cut the grass all the way out to the Augusta Highway. Beneath the pines west of our driveway I’d push the mower in a herky-jerky way. Mow-shove, mow-heave, mow-push, and so it went cutting grass in what was once a cotton field. Old rows made grass cutting a rhythmic chore.

It wasn’t all work though. I played among those pines, and it was there that I accomplished my only perfect record. I climbed trees a thousand times it seems and fell not one time. I climbed one pine in particular and high in its crown I’d wrap my arms and legs around the trunk and stare east as the tree swayed. Even then I felt the pull of destiny. My sister, Brenda, wrecked our go-cart against that tree. In the decades to come that pine and its neighbors would weather go-carts, ice storms, an occasional downburst, and suffer the pestilent pine beetle, but by and large endure.

How my land once looked.

In the decades to come, Dad added on to our home, bricked it, and turned Mom’s yards into a bit of a showplace. Through thick and thin, my parents took great care of their home place and those trees were a vital part of it. Beneath them my parents grew a large azalea garden that was their pride and joy.

Dad died in 2003. Mom died in 2015. September 27, 2024, Helene killed their pines and many a memory, but unlike the poor souls in Western North Carolina, we are blessed. Our family is fine, and so are our homes. Mom and Dads’ parking garages are no more. The home place took a minor hit. My sister’s greenhouse took a hit, and my brother-in-law will have to rebuild his crushed woodworking shop. My land is unrecognizable. I could not find my little dog, Brit’s grave, an oval of 21 flint stones with an upright headstone. It lay just to the left of an old logging road disappeared beneath a fallen forest. My fine oaks and hickories’ red clay root balls threw their tint across what was once green woods.

What’s left of the azalea garden.

Up near the “Gusta” Highway the pines splintered, fell, crashed, and made a fiddlesticks kind of landscape. You can’t even walk through it. You climb, crawl, and wade through boughs and boles. You don’t recognize what was once familiar. You don’t even belong there.

I knew it was bad when my sister, Deb, called me. “I’m glad Mom and Dad are not here to see what happened to their land.” Deb’s right. Shattered trees shatter memories and break the heart. Heart pine heartbreak I call it, but life goes on. Sunlight will find open places to kickstart the plant succession cycle. Barring interference, plant succession will take place as natural communities replace one another.

Grasses will grow in upturned soil, paving the way for other communities. In time, trees will come, and a young forest will take its place, then an old forest, and finally a climax community where dominant species live together in a healthy balance. All this takes a lot of time and the bottom line is sad: we will not see what we had again in our lifetime. Our original world, the only life we knew for a long time is no more.

As I wrote at the time, meanwhile down in the Gulf, tropical storm Milton has been upgraded to a category 5 hurricane. I pray that lightning doesn’t strike twice. Milton don’t follow Helene. Take your heart pine heartbreak out to sea. Way out to sea. And as my little dog’s grave goes, I will find it in time and place a log beside it where I can sit and remember many a good time with her in what’s left of the woods back home.

 

Georgia native Tom Poland writes a weekly column about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and culture and speaks frequently to groups in the South. Governor Henry McMaster conferred the Order of the Palmetto upon Tom, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, stating, “His work is exceptional to the state.” Poland’s work appears in books, magazines, journals, and newspapers throughout the South.

Visit Tom’s website at www.tompoland.net

Email him at [email protected]