Kim and I have lived on Elm Street for thirteen years now, and for much of this time, I have been aware of a strange presence in a neighbor’s yard. A dead tree, tall, straight, and peculiarly bulbous, stood at the center of the yard and to the right of the house. All branches had been cut-off, seemingly long ago, leaving the trunk standing naked as a natural monument, a monument to itself.
On many of our frequent walks around town, I would walk by that house and think that it would be wonderful to enter the yard and photograph the dead tree. However, I never ventured close to it because I did not want to breach the privacy of my neighbors.
Eventually, we got to know Barry and Ellen Strom, and their son, Dustin, the occupants of that house. Yet, for some reason, I never thought of asking for permission to photograph the dead tree; until a few days ago, that is. I ran into Ellen while she was out for one of her frequent walks around the hood, and she responded to my request by saying, “Sure, you’re welcome to take pictures of the totem tree anytime you want.”
A day later, I received this startling note from Ellen: “Well, the tree fell last night, unfortunately! Stood tall for so many years. Come and look if you still would like to. Bottom all rotted through. Don’t know how rotted the top is. We will miss this conversation tree.”
For an instant, it felt as though the decision to finally photograph the monument had brought it down.
The day after I took the pictures, Ellen let me know that the totem tree was a Scottish pine planted at least 70 years ago by previous owners and, curiously, moved around a full three times around the property before the young Strom family moved into the house some 37 years ago. She closed her last message to me with these words: “We fed it to keep it alive, but little by little limbs died off. We thought it looked so interesting and was a great conversation piece, so we left it standing.”
I hope these very late images of the eloquent and colorful remains of the Strom’s totem tree help keep the conversation about it standing a while longer.
Today, I received an email from Bruce Blackburn, another Trumansburg neighbor and photophile friend, who after seeing this post decided to go to Google Maps to see if he could find an image of the tree (which he had missed seeing while still standing) and, lo and behold, he did find it. Take a look yourself: www.google.com/maps/@42.5379919,-76.6586067,3a,37.5y,113.62h,89.35t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJBXl90AHoSW6I-dHQ43UfQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
(Talk about keeping the conversation going…)
