The God Flute

I was raised in rural Virginia as a transplanted Yankee in the early ‘60s. Not just a Yankee, but a Yankee named “Sherman”. Actually, “Damned Yankee” was the preferred term. Detailed inquiries in this area were so numerous in my youth, that I once came home, from the second grade, and asked my father what a “Yank-y-sum-bich” was! It was one word, rather a long word, and as I was learning to sound words out, I was quite confident in my spelling. I didn’t know what one was, but one had apparently passed through the area quite recently, and had been responsible for several FIRES! I had learned the term from the constant procession of people who, upon learning my name, became concerned that I might be somehow related to the “Yank-y-sum-bich” in question.

The confusion brought on by my father’s definition was exceeded only by my amazement at the time line. One hundred years! REALLY? And still that upset? This “Wellspring of Human Warmth” mind-set, as well as the fact that we lived ten miles from the nearest town, conspired to make me a bit of a loner. The nearest “neighborhood kid” was a mile and a half away, and there were no others my age for three miles beyond that, so it was not as if diplomacy could have mitigated my situation. I mention all of this only so that you might understand the importance of The Tree.

Our driveway ran a thousand feet between two fields draped in seasonally rotating blankets of alfalfa, soy beans, and corn. It ended in a teardrop in the center of two acres of yard filled with all manner of trees. As an isolated child I was left to defend those trees and the house that stood in their midst against all manner of threats. Always under-manned and always out-gunned I managed for years to keep Redcoats, Kiowas and Comanches out of the crab apples and the sycamore, the Germans and the Sioux out of the cedars and the mimosa, and the Japanese away from the plums and the wild cherries.

Were it not for the fact that the pirates never attacked the yard, preferring to lay to and board the barns instead, I would have had no rest at all. Rest which I used to maintain a constant vigil for COMMIES! I didn’t know what a Commie looked like, but I was reasonably sure they were either red or pink, and I was certain that it was only my constant patrols that kept them from slaughtering my whole family in their sleep. With the coming of Star Trek and science fiction, my foes also began to include mad, killer robots and a rainbow host of nightmarish aliens! Mine was a very busy childhood!

As the years passed the Redcoats eventually gave up and let go. The Germans and the Japanese were trounced once and for all, and the countless Native tribes agreed to a cease fire. Even the dreaded Commies, the mad, killer robots, and the aliens ( All of whom I suspected of being secretly in cahoots.) disappeared from my radar. At last I could relax. Stand down. Take a little R & R. For this, there was only one place to go. The Tree.

Standing in the center of that tear drop driveway, The Tree was a Chinese Elm. It was grander and taller and far more fun to climb than any other tree in all that vast yard. It had stood as my Command Center all through “The War Years”, and now it became my reading room / art studio / meditation center. The same branches which had once provided boomerangs and muskets now were the topic of my first sketches and watercolors. The same majestic giant that had sheltered tommy guns made of nails and scrap lumber now cradled me as I went to Mars with Edgar Rice Burroughs. In later years, when I first encountered the term”Sanctum Sanctorum”, I immediately thought of a Chinese elm. It was during these quieter years that I first heard the Voice.

This was not the sort of voice that has your parents rushing you to a “special” doctor. This was the Voice of The Tree. A Chinese Elm has small slender leaves which play readily on the slightest of breezes, and when they do you can hear the Voice. On calm days it merely whispers, but as the wind picks up the Voice will rise accordingly, usually to become full blown laughter. Sometimes you could almost make out words, faint and elusive, speaking in a tongue you could almost understand. I was never quite able to breach that communication barrier before we moved away, but to this day I often think that Chinese Elm would be a wonderful language to learn.

In 1975 my family moved to Florida, more specifically to the sleepy little town of Cocoa Beach. The house at 43 Country Club Road was beautiful. It had a pool and a canal out back, BUT it had no trees! Oh, there were a few little palms along the drive in front and a few in the back yard as well, but those were just over-glorified grass, not really trees at all. None of them had a Voice. As a kid who had grown up in the woods, “defending” trees, I looked for woods here. There was NOTHING! The closest I could come were the island chains in the river to the north and south of our home. On my first excursions there I was unimpressed. Then the wind blew. Then I heard The Trees. These were new Trees, and their Voice was different. They didn’t just whisper and laugh on the wind, these trees sang.

They were called Australian Pines, they looked liked the droopy “weeping willow” of the evergreen family, but ,oh, the Voice! It occurred to me then that if God had a flute, it was the Australian Pine. This was truly the woodwind of the Universe, and I could listen to it all day. From that point on, whenever the world started to become too much, whenever I needed to “decompress” I would go to a place where I could hear the wind play through Australian pines, I would go to where I could hear God play a flute.

After my parents’ divorce I wound up on Colonial Drive, in the townhouses being built that summer. The divorce cost me my boat, but I could still find woods. The area between Ramp Road and River Lakes was quite handy. It was also full of Australian Pines, so I could hear the flute music with which I’d become so enamored. Half way through those woods, on a little point that jutted out into the river one Australian pine stood a bit apart from its fellows. I used to climb up that tree and watch the sunset and listen to the “God Flute” play all around me. It was My Tree. That was 1978.

Years later I moved to Harbor Isles, and I used to be able hear that same song on dock. Just south of the point between Buildings Eight and Eleven, where the ramp runs up from the walkway by the lap pool, I could hear that same song. It was not just similar, it was the same Voice, because just behind our dock was that same little point that juts out into the river. On that point still stood My Tree. That’s right, the same Tree! I would stand on our dock at night and listen to the God Flute and it never failed to take me back to the other Tree. It took me back to an idyllic childhood when I first learned to listen to trees. It reminded me of comfort through my turbulent teens. It called back, fresh and new, all the dreams of things both passed and past, and in Solace past, I found Solace still.

Someone cut down My Tree a few years ago. At the time I was LIVID! I was sure it had something to do with someone’s view being blocked, though I was later assured that it was a matter of “safety” because the river had eroded the root system and there was growing concern that a stiff storm would topple it completely. I think highly of the man who told me this, so I feel honor-bound to take his word as Truth.

I only wish I would have known. I would gladly have shored it up with whatever was necessary. Sand bags, stone, armor plating...whatever! It really doesn’t matter now. My Tree is gone. The small wood that once lived where our homes now stand, had been whittled down to one lone survivor. The glorious woodwind section that had serenaded me through some rather tortured times had been reduced to one solo flute. Now it too is gone and that particular song plays only in memory. I miss the last of our pines. My Pine. I miss the sound of the God Flute.

On a “parting note”, faint Flute music can still be heard from across the water on our dock at the northern-most end, behind Building Four or from the dock at Ramp Road Park. If the Voices of Trees played in your childhood, you may still hear their echo there. I heartily recommend the concerts given on any windy night. The admission is still quite reasonable, though seating is limited. In the memories of Solace Past may you too find Solace still.
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Author's Note: A down-sized, edited version of this piece was my first work published by the Brothers Bennison in The Beachside Resident.

On a further note dealing with the woods that once stood between Ramp Rd. and the Condo of River Lakes: I had built a simple tree house in those woods in '78. It was a simple affair built between four Australian Pines. Using a truckload of co-axle cable some construction crew had DUMPED in those woods and the branches of other trees, I used the lashing techniques I had learned in the Scouts many years before, with a U.S.M.C. Kabar as my only tool. Not one nail! It stood on the edge of one of the two perpetually "wet" spots that ran through those woods. Today, the twin lakes of Harbor Isles are located in those same "wet" spots, and the balcony of my condo overlooking the northern lake is probably no more than twenty feet from where that tree house stood near thirty years ago! Life really is full of circles!