166. Pacific Madrone

I love trees. I grew up in the forests of Idaho and it took me a few years in the desert to even begin to appreciate a landscape without trees (and that was also in Idaho…). I’ve been reading about Solomon in I Kings and the trees that fascinated him were the cedars of Lebanon. I’ve never been to Lebanon, but I imagine it to be a little drier than my part of Idaho but maybe not as dry as the part of Idaho that has Juniper trees. So, in my imagination the cedars of Lebanon must be something between a juniper and a Western Red Cedar. Anyway, those are exotic trees Solomon used in building the temple.

An exotic tree for me is the Pacific Madrone. For one thing, it’s only found on the Pacific coast from California to British Columbia—only the coast. As often as I am in the Northwest, I don’t go to the coast frequently. While the tree has been used for a variety of things by the natives, it isn’t typically used for its wood except maybe to burn. When the wood dries, it warps so it doesn’t make good lumber.

Anytime a tree goes outside the normal bounds of trees I am amazed. The thing about the Madrone that amazes me is that it’s an evergreen but it has leaves. It has a light reddish bark that peels off like paper and turns a sort of green. Some of them can be quite tall. They remind me a little bit of Eucalyptus without the pervasive aroma. Their leaves are oblong and grow in groups that form a sort of fan. To me, they are just a really unique tree that kind of bounces out of my ideas of what a normal tree is.

I always think my capacity for categorizing things into what I consider ordinary is a little annoying and occasionally I just want those bounds to be increased or broken. I love trees and the Pacific Madrone sits right on the edge of breaking my ideas of ordinary. It grows on the Northwest coast, just on the edge of my reality, my ordinary imagination, making me realize that there is a world beyond my ordinary world and that maybe within my own world there are some extraordinary things. It might not be up to Solomon’s Temple standards, but it would certainly be up to his exotic standards. That’s why I’m grateful for the Pacific Madrone.