Top Heavy Spruce

“Craaack!”

Irene and I are having a quiet tête-à-tête around the campfire and the sudden noise jolts us both. There is a moment of silence and next we hear a brushing thump of the branches hitting the ground at the front of the house.

“There goes another one”, says Irene. “ Maybe we’re not going to have any trees left come fall.”

“Who would have thought that our global warming problems would include this mess”, I remark.

We get up and walk to the front of the house to find another spruce tree broken off half way up the stem. The treetop carrying thousands of new, green and heavy cones is on the ground at the base of the tree. The damage is bad enough to warrant cutting the rest of the tree down, as it will not survive the mutilation.

There are five more that are leaning dangerously and will probably break before the onslaught is over. Any swaying movement caused by the slightest breeze will overcome the delicate balance of things with disastrous consequences.

During a prolific year of cone production it is not unusual to get some breakage at the very top of the spruce trees but the anomaly is not common, at least in our piece of the world.  The tree weathers the storm so to speak and keeps growing for a time with two distinct tops.

As we walk back to the campfire, I stoop to pick up a small 12-inch branch that has broken off the main stem of the fatality.  There are so many fresh cones that it is impossible to count them and I lose track.  Finally, I pick them off one at a time and come up to 62. The cones on the 15 feet section that just broke off must have numbered in the thousands.

The almost constant showers, moderate temperatures and on again, off again sunshine of this spring and summer makes me feel like we’re living on the coast instead of the semi-arid temperatures that we were used to and who knows, it may become the norm for us in future. Not a pleasant thought.

The Yukon is blessed with an abundant amount of raw nature. In our years at the lake we have simply enjoyed the natural setting around us. Sure, we may have cleared the odd tree, taken out the deadfalls and trimmed a bush here and there but by and large our patch of the Yukon has remained as sculpted by nature. We have become very attached to our trees no matter how insignificant they may be in relation to the rest of the country. It is sad to see so many of them succumb.