The Big Tree

By Sam Churchill

Mother began calling it The Big Tree and others adopted the name and it became sort of a landmark.

It towered some 200 feet or more beside the county road a mile from the Western Cooperage headquarters camp in northwestern Oregon where we lived.

Dad estimated The Big Tree to be about 500 or 600 years old and judged its diameter at eight feet. By some quirk of fate, when the company logged the area The Big Tree was left standing.

Mother reasoned that it was God’s will and that The Big Tree was left there for a purpose. Her hunch was correct but I wouldn’t know that until many years in the future, when it became, for me, a symbol of an era and of our family life.

The Big Tree survived World War I and a Spruce Division logging camp established nearby. And when the county road was widened and surfaced in later years The Big Tree was spared. Vicious spring storms that sometimes ripped through the area sent hundreds of smaller, weaker trees crashing to the ground. But The Big Tree lived on.

When I entered the first grade in the logging camp’s one-room school The Big Tree was utilized as a living textbook of history. Miss Hoskins, our teacher, said that it was about three years old in 1348 when the Black Death swept Europe killing more than half the population.

It was 147 years old by the time Columbus discovered America, and it was a towering giant of 275 years when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.

It was more than 450 years of age when the Lewis and Clark Expedition drifted down the Columbia River and set up a fort and winter quarters on what is now the Lewis and Clark River near Astoria.

As a historical reminder, The Big Tree helped many a Western Cooperage youngster through history because it always seemed so much easier to remember important dates with it there to help you.

On Sundays when Dad and the other loggers didn’t have to work, Mother, Dad and I would often walk to The Big Tree and back. Dad was a quiet, thoughtful man who never said much, but he was a logger and he knew about and loved big timber. He would often comment on the size, beauty and strength of The Big Tree.

Mother would nod and would say that The Big Tree reminded her of him. That would embarrass Dad. He would fuss with his suspenders, give me a warning look that said,
“Don’t you laugh,” and suggest to mother that she “talk sense.”

It wasn’t until the late 1930’s that The Big Tree was felled. I was working at the camp by then and one day driving past the old Big Tree site, I noticed there was no longer a tree there – only a high stump. It was a terrible moment of shock and suddenly I realized how much The Big Tree had really meant to me.

It was truly symbolic. The era it represented was dying the same as it had died. The old camp that had been my life for so many years was nearing its end. The timber was almost gone. Old friends were gone. The world was changing and I would have to change with it.

And for the first time I realized with a start that Dad was no longer young and vigorous. His muscles were still big, his heart generous, and his laugh deep and hearty. But age had etched lines in the ruddy face. He was old and mother was aging.

Time has moved on. The old camp is gone. Dad and mother are gone. A husky young hemlock has taken root in the stump of the Big tree the same as I borrowed strength from Dad and Mother.

I visit the decaying stump of the Big Tree often. When I need strength, it gives me strength. When I am lonely it becomes a companion and a comfort. It asks nothing but gives much.

I know now why The Big Tree was spared and why it became so important to our family. It was God’s way of assuring Dad and Mother that I would never forget the land as it used to be; that I would preserve the memory of friends and faces, sounds and silences, joys and heartaches.

The Big Tree is the hand of yesterday. And now, years later, I can go to that spot and be comforted.

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