Wood Beam 52

It once stood lofty and proud amongst a stand - connectedly - to fellow kin, conceivably assisting as a look-out for the hawk, feasibly even asylum for a small forest creature seeking cover from ground predators or the daunt of winter, it certainly could have allowed shade to a woodland wanderer under it's linear branched bristly canopy on their journey. It had come from humble beginnings as a sapling budded from a cone dispatched by a storms high winds where it pitched to the ground and made for a squirrel meal. This cone accommodated as many as two-hundred seeds within its tusk where just one of those seeds over-looked by the squirrel due to its ill mannered feasting customs fell through the myriad needles that made-up as part of the forest floor. It eventually made its way to richer soil and moisture that the needles retain from spring rains and with that moisture it was allowed the gift of life, and it sought out to participate and begin in the act of photosynthesis to become the towering icon it became.

A dire day it was indeed when the time came and the pine was cut-down - literally - in the prime of its life and not by natural selection where it would have died of old age and its demise would have caused it to topple-over and cast out and shed one of its own conical pods containing its own future potential offspring of its lineage. No, it was that of man who took it from its plot and it was man that erased all the memories of the many seasons it had seen come and go, It would no longer feel the wind and rain that it once felt on it's bark and branches, the sunrises and the sunsets too would no longer play thespian to one of many attentive treed audience. It would not bore witness again, the birth and re-birth of natures course that of its fellow clan and that of many other species in the forest, like all the many plants and animals all cohesively living together. It was unceremoniously removed and dragged by ass to be stacked and piled along with the rest of the dispatched and hauled away.

Bartered for or maybe bought it came to rest at a saw mill where predetermined dimensions were all ready in the planing for it's new shape and form, and hopefully its new purpose to serve again. It was hoisted and laid on a conveyor-belt where it slowly made its way to an impending automated surgical operation awaiting its forced cosmetic make-over. The huge circular saw-blade made four passes of it's almost 50 foot length, ridding the coarse bark-face only to reveal a brand new complexion of that in color and texture. Maybe the tall pines demise was not all in vain based on its new facade; it also still retained its girth, and it's most prominent feature, its great length, that still allowed it to maintain its dominate strength that with-stood the winds and the rain and other elements Mother Natures wrath would have caused other plants and animals in the woods to succumb to. It now rendered a more eye-appealing lean taper, still tall and true.

The long beam, the form in which the pine trees former self was dictated into by mans intervention must have most likely partook of righteous nautical service, for the area it laid rest on this day was a region known for it's historical shipping port in Marquette, Michigan on Lake Superior when they discovered iron ore in 1844 . Could it have been part of one of many heavy wooden schooners, steamers or commercial fishing vessels that traversed to and from the port where it may have fell victim in an eon of early navigation and found it could not contend with Lake Superior's infamous gales and fogs that inevitably caused the many documented shipwrecks? Maybe its size and shape determined that its lack of sea legs made it land-bound and implemented as a main beam of a dock? It is also certain that this discovered resting place was probably not it's first, nor last for that matter, maybe it floated and bumped on many shores from the bay in Duluth Minnesota where it floated back away and entwined through the maze of Madeline, Apostle and Outer Islands. It could have feasibly floated and touched Isle Royale near Thunder Bay or landed on Canada's, Caribou Island only be cast out again into Lake Superiors icy waters seeking another one of natures port where the ice jams on winter covered shores and unmercifully ground into the rocky shore only to be entombed by ice awaiting springs release after a weary travelers snow-bound hiatus.

Today it did indeed serve once again, amiable or not, albeit none the less very much admired by a clan of beach-combers seeking agates and found objects of art created by Mother Natures as a luncheon counter and seat and stirred provocation of and muses of where it came, where it had been; maybe it has even been to the same place more the once based on Lake Superiors and Mother Natures undetermined disposition and at times, wrath. When lunch was complete we paid homage to this long last article, an object without a home and stood it erect into a hole furrowed by an eager youth for its secure footing. Once sand and stone were placed at the beams base it once again stood tall and proud as its former undisturbed self once stood, roots firmly planted in the conceptive forest floor. As we were about to part ways a stamp made of what appears to be lead shows "52". A muse within a muse, so many muses and so little time. Mans intervention in nature, this time paying servile acclaim to this antediluvian form and preserved in the minds of three beach-combers minds and capture by a modern day format. As we walked away my personal thoughts still lead me down the path of consciences of if it would be dispatched again by wind and rain or again, or man's intervention and need to topple it over and shove it off back to the sea only to have the unpredictable Lake Superior tides and currents send it to unknown location be discovered again.