Some summers ago I stood precariously on a 6-foot stepladder, sawing off the limb of a Siberian elm. The handsaw bit through the textured bark in a few smooth strokes, then hit the heartwood and slowed. I tried not to rush. I thought I would actually go faster by keeping my strokes smooth and long, conserving the strength of my arm.
The author's wounded but enduring tree. Siberian elms grow in sunlight or shade, in dry sand or riverbank mud. The only forces that seem to do them real harm are fire, ice, lightning, and devastating winds.
My eyes wandered. Siberian elm bark is so deeply textured, so rich in convolutions, that it has always suggested faces to me. The curve that would complete one face is absent, and instead some broad ridge sweeps in and draws my eye farther, to a face appended to the first, and this second ...
