Trees hold special meaning to me

That is a historic tree behind my mom. She no longer lives in Fentonwood. But that grand tree in the background will thrive there another four or five hundred years, when all of us will have long since gone to that big treehouse in the sky.

Trees--and that grove in particular--hold a special meaning for me. My first job out of college was as a freshly scrubbed, wet-behind-the-ears PR flak for Weyerhaeuser, the "Tree Growing Company," a dream job for me. As a kid, I loved playing in the woods--buildling fir-bough camps, flying down trails, scrambling over mossy logs or scooting up tall trees. Later, I grew to love the Northwest's sheltering, fragrant forests even more as a hiker and camper. The dark, cool woods always called to me, soothing my restless spirit and offering sweet solace in a world bereft of fresh air, peace and quiet.

Anyway, a veteran forester named Howard Millan befriended me at Weyerhaeuser, taking me under his sturdy wing and teaching me the ways of the corporate woods. He gladly supplied me with three dozen seedlings from the Big W to plant on the hillside behind my parents' home, where the furrowed corpses of fallen cedars felled by bandy-legged loggers of long ago lay mute and slowly rotting beneath a mad tangle of blackberries, unruly salal and scraggly hazelnut. My goal was to jump-start my own "tree farm," returning this little half acre of paradise-lost to its former sylvan splendor.

So, sometime in the early 1980s, I patiently planted each of those 36 seedlings on the hillside. But, to my great disappointment, most of them never made it out of the starting gate, nibbled to death by the gully's elusive "mountain beavers," trampled underfoot by unwary siblings or smothered by relentless waves of ivy, stickers and underbrush.

But a half-dozen or so defied the odds and survived their adolescent trauma, rising above the thick understory to become sturdy, stalwart citizens. The result, 30 years later, is the "historic" fir tree in the background of this photo, serenaded by a trio of graceful hemlocks below it, to the right, just in view down the hill.

NOTE:
Charlie Ganong, the Burien writer who wrote about his mothers Highline Fir tree in the attached story, was my neighbor boy who lived next door in Gregory Heights. 
He was at Harvard when I was in Boston on a trip and  decided to take a subway to nearby Harvard Yard.
I had no idea where Harvard Yard was but  figured it was a bunch of  brick  buildings surrounded  by a fence with some  shrubs,  a  swing or two and maybe  a dog.
I emerged from  the  subway at an intersection and the light was  green so I crossed  the busy  street  and was standing there without a  clue on where  to go and  a voice said "Aren't you Jerry Robinson?"
I was  delightfully stunned. What  are the  odds on his being three thousand miles  from Seattle. on the  same corner at the  same street corner?
We found a lunch room and he  gave a small tour of his Yard. Never  saw a swing  or a bull dog.
Charley is today one  of the guys  who brings you many of  the teevee sports events  you watch.
He was  an honor grad and captain of  the 
Evergreen football  team in White Center during the Jack 
Thompson quarterback years.

Jerry Robinson, Publisher