Skating with the buffalo

By Gary Salmon

Are you tired of the lives we are living (or not) since this corona? Days are certainly moving more slowly than in the past and each invites us to do something spectacular with warmer days and anticipations of the future. We need some sort of key movement to welcome us into spring and celebrate our lives, which brings me to composer Roger Miller and his collections of children’s songs. This little ditty from decades ago got me thinking about actions out of the box and even though the word “can’t.” The song: “Ya Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd” is an invitation to do something flamboyant that stirs the mind.

Earlier this spring I was pushed off my “forester thinking” when the transfer station manager out of the blue asked me if I knew anything about giant sequoias; specifically, if you could plant them in Vermont? At the time my standard conservative answer was “not likely” and “have you ever seen one in Vermont?” But—why not? It certainly will not happen if no one does it.

So I looked it up and it turns out there are people planting giant sequoia trees all over the country. What a great idea for Arbor Day. Plant the largest tree in the world in your back yard.

So my friend asked “How big do they grow?” followed by “How fast do they grow?” I said, “If you have to ask it won’t be an adventure” and “Don’t leave your planting shovel in the hole.”

A Google search and my credit card quickly found four seedlings for him from a nursery in northern Michigan.

Between Roger’s song and giant sequoias came a minor setback — a heart attack — which left me in the ICU and a cardiac unit and finally home to recover.

Coronavirus dominates the medical world and even a heart attack forces families into difficult situations when all a spouse can do is watch as patient is wheeled into an emergency room with no chance of visiting and possibly never seeing them again.

For the next week I was probed, prodded, pricked, picked up, and otherwise subjected to great medical care without seeing my spouse, which left a body, when ready for transport back home from Burlington, that had been so sanitized that I looked like Donald Trump after a weekend in Mar-A-Lago in the sun — orange! Added to the color list were great yellows and dark purples and a skin that is finally turning white. And of course the ability to breathe again.

So look for the spectacular this spring, because you deserve it, “go out on a limb” and see what you can make happen or create and think out of the box. The “great idea trees” going into the ground this spring are coming from Cold Stream Farm Nursery.

Celebrate Arbor Day and remember the last line of Miller’s song, which is perhaps more important than all the earlier ones: “But you can be happy if you’ve a mind to.”