The Tree-Huggers of the ChicFinn Cottage 

“Ya’ll aren’t tree-huggers are you?” Brian, the excavation contractor asked as he surveyed our dirt driveway before the weather turned cooler. The mosquitos were still biting and Vaimo and I had finally had enough of attempting to fill the pot holes ourselves. We were “done” carrying the five gallon bucket up dirt hills, attempting to fill the four foot crevices that would wash out immediately with the next rainstorm. As we chatted while the sun set, we learned Brian had completed some other work on the property for the previous owners, building a retaining wall on the south side of our house ages ago. He was happy to see it was holding up well. “Those trees on the drive weren’t as grown in back then,” he remembered, “but coming up that one hill with the dump truck was a trip.” It was the fall of 2019 when Brian came out to look at our nearly half a mile long driveway that I like to refer to as “an extreme sport” when it’s my turn to run the Boss plow we keep attached to our rusting Chevy Silverado in the winter. When simply arriving home by car, I’ve learned to gun it up the first hill when it’s icy, and how to time it just right to get enough momentum to crest the big hill heading toward the house but not too much so as to be able to make the sharp turn necessary to head down toward the garage.

Most people have never really experienced anything like our driveway. I provide very explicit directions to people coming to visit for the first time noting the trouble spots. People thank me once they make it up to the front door with my lengthy step by step instruction, reflecting on how they thought I was maybe being a touch over the top in my description of things. If you don’t have all-wheel drive, or the like, only those who know these roads can make it up, and only under certain conditions, in winter. In February when we closed on the house years ago, neither Vaimo nor I could make it up the last hills, our front wheel drive vehicles got us most of the way, but soon careening out of control, both ending up in snowbanks as we relied on the excitement of our new house carrying us and our belongings on foot the last 200 yards up the icy driveway. We’ve since upgraded our vehicles to allow us the peace of mind to reach the house by car in all seasons.

In 2020, “Keep left at the fork” shifted to “keep right at the fork” after we secured a line of credit at the bank to “buy” $10,000 worth of labor and dirt to fix three-quarters of the drive. Ten grand, for dirt. I don’t begrudge paying the movers of the dirt, they rolled in with all kinds of construction equipment that I suspect is a lot to maintain. The types of earth movers that usually only exist in my periphery, huge trucks with beds that lift and dump out their contents behind them, the pavement rollers that flatten and smooth the earth into the human-made architectures of shaping the landscape. Equipment and methods for which I’ve had no need to know actual terminology. Before moving to the country I had only general language to describe the different attachments for a steer-skid to move and manipulate the earth into some kind of pleasant, managed, habitable interaction. But culvert and various dirt grade classifications become shared rural words across all classes. We lost a few trees, mostly young birch and an adolescent elm, and Vaimo and I vowed to build our tree reserve back up elsewhere on the property. It was a loss I could come to with some peace.

But some losses feel much more difficult to accept. On my way to Grand Rapids earlier this month, I was suddenly struck by the smell of sawdust wafting in through the vents of the Suburban I’m still getting used to driving. A sign earlier near the Casino on Highway 200 said “road work ahead” and the caution signs informed me that I might need to take it slow across the next stretch. These blinking signs had not prepared me for the sight of piles of trees lined up on the side of the road, in some clumps large extended families of aspen, in others tall red pines, needles intact, trunks still alive from where they had recently been chainsawed through. Tears filled to my eyes as I drove by piles and piles of felled trees, eventually coming to cleared snowbanks full of sawdust, strewn in absurdly large quantities, tan remains contrasting the glaring white. “Why?” I asked aloud, to myself and the fallen trees. “Why?” I asked the workers through my SUV, as they, in their giant construction equipment chopped down trees, bulldozed hills. Their large machinery lifting trunks one couldn’t reach all the way around with one’s arms alone. I cried openly when these metal arms moved the trees into wood chippers spewing out what once was this strong tree into such small bits. I usually love the smell of sawdust, especially in my own wood shop (any area of the house I’ve claimed as my shop when I wheel in my table saw to chop boards for a canvas frame stretcher). But on this day, when I was surrounded by the smells of the forest and captive to the visual information of bearing witness to this destruction, I felt sick. When I returned home, I learned that MNDOT is doing work on highway 200 and that I was seeing the tree extraction as workers prepare for road widening measures for construction to begin when we're no longer in the deep freeze of winter. I couldn’t help but think back to how similar this road widening effort was to the trees we lost on our driveway this summer, all for benefits I, and others, would reap. I wanted to hug every single one of those tall red pines in particular. The majesty of those trees, they are awe-inspiring. I wondered if the folks removing the trees ever felt the weight of their task. If they carry the pain of this massacre.

Brian was affable enough, he did great work for us, we’ll likely hire him again when we can finance more dirt. He delivered the question “Ya’ll aren’t tree-huggers are you?” in the way that was both about if we would be ok with a couple of trees being cut down so that we could widen the driveway a bit, and also a coded question. A coded question that rang of similarly questionable words like “cultured” or “hippie” that have been bandied about to refer to me or Vaimo in the new-to-us environment of rural West-Central Minnesota. Questionable because these words mean something and they also mean something else. A question that seems to have a “if this, then that” kind of assumption. If we care about the trees, then we must be those kinds of people. Already oddities, two women living together. Both of us cautious in how we reference each other in public and in front of cis-men with large construction equipment. Not because anything ever has explicitly threatened our existence out here, but you know, we are tree huggers. We are the type who sometimes find ourselves actually hugging trees. Thanking them when we’re in the thicket of quaking aspen on the haapeniemi (peninsula) heading down to the lake on which we live. I consider the large, wise oak tree on our acreage a friend. Is it so bad to care about the trees so deeply that one is moved to tears when they must be removed for human safety or passage? Human convenience? Living in rural means bearing witness to the extraction of natural resources to support all our expectations of how our lives work these days. It means coming close to these truths more often than not. I’ve got to hope that there will be regrowth out of destruction. That when we take, we should also give; let’s seek more balance and equanimity. May your journeys be filled with trees, and that you find the occasions to hug them often.

What I’m Reading

Beyond the Pink Tide: Art and Political Undercurrents in the Americas, by Macarena Gómez-Barris

I read so many books in-between my newsletters, but I know it’s time to review one when it’s all I can talk about at the kitchen table with Vaimo. Beyond the Pink Tide is exactly that kind of book, I can’t stop talking about. This concise academic text is part of a series of American Studies explorations on the important relationship between politics and culture. This volume explores the ways that artists are using art to confront the realities and impacts of neoliberalism in Latin America. From performing artists to visual artists Gómez-Barris takes up the power of art in imagining other political relationships in governments insistent on repressing the power of the people regardless of their left or right leaning agendas. A great meditation on the limits of electoral politics and primer for those of us engaging in important visioning work. 

What I’m Hearing

Anything for Selena A wonderful exploration of the impact of Selena on the world twenty-six years after her murder. The host Maria Garcia, connects past to present understandings of the pop star who left this world much too soon. Filled with narrative reflection and interviews with people who knew her and were impacted by Selena’s star power, Garcia explores the emotional landscape of Selena in 2021. Covering diverse themes like the borderlands, body politics, language, and the Tejano music industry, this podcast has me exclaim, “yay! A new episode dropped” whenever one shows up in my podcast feed.

Artist Offerings

• Check out this gorgeous relief sculpture of an eagle uncovered at the foot of Templo Mayor in Mexico City
• Honor the life of the important feminist art historian Cindy Nemser by learning about why she changed the field here.
• “From portraiture to satire, appropriation, politicized pop and conceptualism to its imprint today in digital art, the works of artists such as Rupert García, Ester Sánchez, Malaquías Montoya, and the Real Fuerza Aérea Chicana laid foundations in art, but their contributions were greatly minimized” Read this article on the importance of The Great Tortilla Conspiracy
• Look at this important book highlighting visionaries of color documenting important presence in art
• And lastly, learn about the amazing work by Jami Porter Lara doing important conceptual pottery engaging the relationship between the natural world and the US/Mexico border among other things.

Creative Ritual

My show at the MacRostie closed at the end of January which meant I picked up my paintings earlier this month. Some of them were hung back up in my studio, just in time for videographers to stop by and interview me for a short promotional video thanks to my LRAC Cohort support. I’ve been attending a lot of webinars about art business and have been trying to develop a daily painting practice, which I post to my Instagram Feed most religiously. I am in the midst of a website redesign and submitted my first application for an artist residency. If all goes well, I will be somewhere else for ten days this summer. Cross your fingers for me! In the next two weeks I will be trying to slow down and play more in my studio and keep working on my Kitchen Saints project which is two hot sauce bottle portraits complete (of a total of 13). Excited to see where daily painting and more experimenting in my studio will take me.

Questions to Ponder

Have you thanked a tree today? Have you hugged one lately?
What worlds remain in your periphery that might warrant more exploration than what you’ve given so far?What words in your language do you use that are coded? Are you seeking shared meaning among the multiple interpretations of these words you may be using in your work?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. 

-KCF

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