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The Town of Ithill in the Pines
A Pointless Story
I grew up in a ponderosa pine forest. Though as a child I didn't appreciate them as much because I had been indoctrinated by Tolkien to think that a proper forest ought to be thick and dark with a canopy of leaves blocking out the sun a hundred feet above your head. The ponderosa pine grows into a sort of open glade with lots of dappled sunlight reaching the forest floor between the trees and their long needles. The trees are staggered about 4 meters apart in a healthy forest, though where I grew up they were often just 2 meters apart and rather scraggly. The needles are these wonderfully long bundles of three at least 10cm in length and often as long as 15cm.
The long needles also make a ponderosa forest sound different. In a deciduous forest it’s a distinctly leafy sort of sound when the wind rustles all the leaves. Or in a forest of spruce the wind hisses a bit at it goes through the short needles. But when it goes into those long needles it causes a roar almost exactly like the sound of distant waves on a beach. When I was young I would imagine that the wind in the pines was actually the sound of the sea rushing in to drown the valley. And in my daydreams I would go down to look upon the inlet of a strange alien sea replacing the mundane town of Elizabeth.
Far shores that I would travel in a canoe to reach unfamiliar lands and townships along the Sea of Tethys. I was like that, big imagination. I would play with my sister a lot making towns and roads by raking or pushing away the thick mat of pine needles on the forest floor. I remember hardly any of the street names now, but I remember that we created an imaginary town with enough room for 50 children between just the two of us. Years later I was reminded of this when looking at the way towns here in the west were often laid out with the expectation of tens of thousands who never arrived.
I grew up in a ponderosa pine forest. Though as a child I didn't appreciate them as much because I had been indoctrinated by Tolkien to think that a proper forest ought to be thick and dark with a canopy of leaves blocking out the sun a hundred feet above your head. The ponderosa pine grows into a sort of open glade with lots of dappled sunlight reaching the forest floor between the trees and their long needles. The trees are staggered about 4 meters apart in a healthy forest, though where I grew up they were often just 2 meters apart and rather scraggly. The needles are these wonderfully long bundles of three at least 10cm in length and often as long as 15cm.
The long needles also make a ponderosa forest sound different. In a deciduous forest it’s a distinctly leafy sort of sound when the wind rustles all the leaves. Or in a forest of spruce the wind hisses a bit at it goes through the short needles. But when it goes into those long needles it causes a roar almost exactly like the sound of distant waves on a beach. When I was young I would imagine that the wind in the pines was actually the sound of the sea rushing in to drown the valley. And in my daydreams I would go down to look upon the inlet of a strange alien sea replacing the mundane town of Elizabeth.
Far shores that I would travel in a canoe to reach unfamiliar lands and townships along the Sea of Tethys. I was like that, big imagination. I would play with my sister a lot making towns and roads by raking or pushing away the thick mat of pine needles on the forest floor. I remember hardly any of the street names now, but I remember that we created an imaginary town with enough room for 50 children between just the two of us. Years later I was reminded of this when looking at the way towns here in the west were often laid out with the expectation of tens of thousands who never arrived.
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What's your childhood garden?