Bertha Rogers

In December 1989, I left the Upper West Side of Manhattan for a few acres, a house, and a barn in the western Catskills. I had lived in New York since 1974, and I had had enough of sidewalks and people and interminable noise. I exchanged cacophony for a quiet 10½ acres of an old farm; the people who had lived there for generations had grown old and retired. My happiness was waiting for me in the shape of trees.

The first and most important thing I did was contact the Delaware County Department of Environmental Conservation about the state tree planting program; I ordered 1,000 Norway Spruces that would be delivered in the spring, in two 36-inch square paper bags, just in time for a working visit by my daughters and some friends on Mother’s Day in 1990. Their gift to me was helping to plant the 12-inch seedlings. We opened the soil in a long ago pasture with spades and shovels, inserted the fragile infants’ roots, and hoped for the best. 

Later, I planted one hundred black walnut whips that would become a majestic grove. I planted shagbark and hickories and sugar maples and larches and poplars and catalpas and hackberries and green ashes and honeysuckle and red twig dogwoods and star magnolias and service berries and apples and cherries and more. 

Today, the spruces are about 80 feet tall, they are a glorious forest, a place with its own climate and creatures and deep secrets. The walnuts are bearing fruit, and the hickories are promising more. Bears and foxes and coyotes and raccoons and skunks and deer and fishers and birds move in and out. I watch and listen. Just ask me what I believe: I believe in trees.