The Promise of New

Most folks I’ve talked to were rather happy to see 2023 end.

It’s not that it was necessarily a horrible year filled with wholesale war and disease and civil disorder and apocalyptic horsemen and mayhem. And while the weather wasn’t exactly ideal, it wasn’t really that horrible either. It seems that 2023 was simply “one of those years”. Perhaps that perception was fueled by the talking heads spouting off on those 24/7 grievance machines we call the news and the Internet, or perhaps many of us were simply in a myopic funk for a year.

And the year here in the Snowbelt was seemingly headed towards a very double whammy anticlimactic ending. Since the era of European settlement, there had been less than a handful of recorded snowless Brown Christmases. The first was 110 years ago with repeats about 75 years ago. There was a Brown Christmas in the Snowbelt this year, and conditions were quite ripe for an unprecedented Brown New Year as well.

In the end, a little bit of normalcy prevailed. There was a fresh blanket of snow on New Year’s Day morning.

Stormie the Trail Dog and I set out that morning to visit a grove of young and middle-aged balsam and white cedar that surround a stand of mostly young hemlock. Amongst those young hemlocks are three magnificent, ancient and towering hemlock trees.

I could not guess nor imagine how old these three trees are, but they are obviously very old. The surrounding black muck wetlands may have prevented them from being felled and reduced to sawlogs during the lumber boom 150 years ago. They also stand far away from the footwall of the iron formation, which spared them being removed in the last 130 years to make way for the workings of an iron mine.

I like being amongst the hemlock. Even in a small stand such as this it is truly otherworldly; the air is still and quiet and the ground feels soft and cushioned underfoot. It is calm. At least until Stormie zoomed in. In very short order she raced about and flushed more partridge and rabbits than I thought could exist in such a relatively small area.

It is probably safe to say she likes being amongst the hemlock as well, but for much different reasons and with calmness not being among them.

The proliferation of young hemlock along the flanks serves as a reminder that they can remain in the sapling and seedling stage a remarkably long time. And even after the grand old hemlock dies, she stands for an equally ridiculously long time defiantly challenging the other forces of nature to topple her.

Time is of a different dimension amongst the hemlocks. A human life span measures in decades and the age of our nation is but a few centuries. The hemlock sapling can wait those same number of decades while patiently building a solid network of roots before bursting skyward then standing proudly for many centuries, creating an environment below that only other hemlocks can grow and survive within. These giants have a commitment that lasts for nearly a millennium and are playing the long game. The human lifespan is exponentially shorter, and we are hyper focused on the here and the now.

An eastern hemlock can take over 200 years to reach maturity and can live for up to 800 years.

It was reassuring to see snow on New Year’s Day morning, even if it was only two inches in depth instead of a normal New Year’s Day snowpack of two feet. And it was very reassuring to spend some time amongst the hemlock.

Realizing that each of these towering ancients could have been here centuries ago and could still be here centuries from now, with their tiny cones perpetuating giant offspring that will be here a millennium from now offers a tangible link to an ancient timeline that bears the constant promise of new.

Happy 2024!