Orange ooze. It’s never a good sign. When two aspen trees we planted last fall didn’t grow leaves, my husband and I took a closer look. We noticed orange streaks on the bark and liquid orange seeping from a hole.
I began researching aspen on the Internet, but the prognosis wasn’t good. Cytospora canker. Certain death. The trees may have been stressed from too much water, or by drought. Since our subdivision’s clay soil is better suited for pottery than gardening, I wondered whether my zealous watering had created a soggy mess around the tree roots that led to the canker.
An e-mail to the state cooperative extension office (the Mayo Clinic of tree advice) brought a reply that wasn’t reassuring. You may prolong the life of the trees, the e-mail said, but eventually they will “fall to the disease.”
I should be accustomed to dead trees by now. Scientists say aspen mortality is increasing in every Western state, for reasons that aren’t clear, and by some estimates 10 percent of aspen in the West ultimately could die.
It’s not just the aspen.
Much of the area around Granby has become a ghoulish landscape of fried-looking brown trees. Dead lodgepole pine are becoming the norm thanks to the voracious pine beetle sweeping the West. Entire mountains north of Lake Granby are covered with dead trees. Last summer, the beetles’ swath of destruction seemed concentrated around Grand Lake, but now the sea of rust has reached Granby and beyond.
Mountain biking along a ridge near our home, I had a bird’s eye view of the beetles’ progression towards Fraser. It’s actually pretty to see brown trees interspersed with the green, until you realize they will all turn brown, then gray, as they continue to deteriorate.
Until this summer, I didn’t believe the experts who predicted the county would lose 80 to 90 percent of its lodgepole pines. I can’t imagine this area without all the tall emerald-green trees marching up the mountains, shading the hiking trails and looking Christmas-card perfect in winter, covered with snow.
Piles of cut trees have become a familiar sight. As land owners clear dead pines from their property, we see homes, buildings, even goat pens, that we never knew existed. Views of previously hidden mountain peaks have emerged all over the county. On the bright side, houses once surrounded by trees now have sweeping views. But the beetle epidemic also makes the county ripe for a major forest fire.
I understand that forest fires greatly benefit lodgepole pine. Fire is part of a hundred-year cycle, and most of the trees in Grand County date back about that far. But with warmer winters and summers, the beetles have destroyed more trees in a shorter amount of time than ever before, moving faster than anyone predicted. Overcrowded and insect-damaged trees on public lands have provided the perfect dining atmosphere. I’m no tree expert, but fire seems inevitable.
I once worked for a woman who had a dying office plant removed because it was bad feng shui. Dead plants contain dead chi, which is apparently bad for business. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I had been dumping the dregs of my coffee cup into the plant when I was too busy to walk to the sink.
The plant probably wasn’t getting enough sun, I told myself. Or was it the coffee? Feeling guilty, I secretly took the plant home and nursed it back to health. Now, like dumping my coffee in the office plant, I’m afraid of what I have done to contribute to global warming and the dead trees around me.
When planting the aspen, my husband remarked that you plant a tree for your children, or for the next generation anyway. We are both from rural Nebraska, where people refer to scrubby mulberry bushes as “trees.” Growing up, one of the few trees in our yard was a giant locust my great-grandmother planted to protect the house from storms. I remember standing under the tree watching thunderheads building in the western sky, feeling safe under the thorny black branches, which had taken the brunt of many a storm.
After my husband cut down the infected aspen trees, I noticed their absence whenever I looked outside. Small as they were, I missed them.
But a few days later, I grew used to the trees being gone. It was as if we had never bothered to plant them in the first place.
The Grand County my children will grow up to know won’t be covered in giant lodgepole pine. I’m not sure anyone knows what this area will look like five or 10 years from now. Maybe the aspen will flourish, turning the entire county ablaze with yellow and orange in the fall. Or we might have huge areas scorched black by fire.
As for my husband and me, we will probably continue to plant trees in our yard, or wherever else we decide to live, hoping for the best.
