The Ponderosa

Written December 30, 2013

There is a ponderosa pine tree growing just beyond the southwest corner of our house. A giant, it towers precariously above the house and only slightly off-set from the power lines that run along the road. Its long-ass needles drop blankets in my yard and huge-ass cones lay landmines throughout its perimeter and I cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of it.

I grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills amongst a native canopy of ponderosa and digger pines, live, black and poison oaks, manzanita and deer brushes. I know this the tree well. I loved ponderosas growing up. I climbed in the small ones growing on my parent’s property. I braided the 5” needles and sometimes tried to weave them into baskets like the local Native Americans I learned about in my schoolbooks. I graduated from Ponderosa High School where a ginormous specimen graced the back athletic fields (sadly I believe that tree was eradicated a few years back due to age and the danger of falling. RIP, big guy).

Ponderosas suited the area of my youth, and their presence in the skyline of my direct and peripheral memory is both vivid and impressive. But here in western Washington the ponderosa pine is sorely out of place. The needles shed in autumn are long, hard and prickly and interact with the environment differently than Douglas fir needles. Also, the cones huge, are super hard and sticky with sap. If you step on one or stub your toe on one it’d hurt, whereas the Doug fir cones are smaller, softer and downright comfortable by comparison. The point being the poor pine is a little unusual for this area despite its ability to thrive here nonetheless.

However, the tree is a great conversation piece, and more than one neighbor has asked if they might take one or many pine cones home for decoration or projects. I myself have piles of them which the squirrels love to riffle through whenever in want of a snack.

One time, my neighbor told me the origin story of our tree. If I remember correctly, it was planted a million years ago when the TV show Bonanza was at the height of its popularity. Apparently the forest service gave ponderosa saplings to local schoolchildren. The kids living in our house at the time planted theirs in the front yard. Those kids have long grown and moved away but my neighbor bore witness to that saplings rise. A tree that thirty years later would welcome me home.

Its like our sentinel.

So much prickly.