The trees of the Northwest are old and large and as a rule, rarely lose their leaves.
They are Ever Green in the Evergreen State.
Except when they’re not.
The Douglas Firs, the Western Red Cedars, the giants whose girth took a dozen loggers to fell —
These are the iconic trees of the Pacific Northwest.
Except when they’re not.
Except when the tree, as common as pancakes, is a maple.
Its stature and shape won’t catch your eye like the thousand-year giants with the bark that puts off rotting for another rainy day.
But the maple’s blocky gray skin still reads like Braille beneath a girl’s fingertips, telling her to look up.
To see the spaces where the new leaves — Bigleaf but not yet big — overlap up to the canopy,
where the wind shuffles their new cells,
still supple with growth.
