Looking Back
A chestnut tree shepherds generations, generosity and nature’s gentle flow.
The farm’s old chestnut tree nurtured a generation of kids.
The old gravel road meandered through deep forest a few miles from the tiny town of Yacolt, Washington, and ended abruptly at a neglected driveway that was claimed by wild blackberries.
Faye and her husband, Lenny, were visiting her parents’ farm in Yacolt, where Faye grew up in the 1940s. At that time the area was a blackened landscape, but now, in 1964, she saw that the land had been reborn. The woods, bright with fall colors, intrigued Lenny.
Down the lonely drive, above the canopy of fir and alder, loomed an immense American chestnut tree. “I’ll bet there’s a house down here,” Lenny told Faye, fighting his way thorough the brambles.
The brush gave way to a clearing with a small house, a large barn, several outbuildings, a field and many fruit trees. The place was obviously abandoned. A small enclosed porch led to the house’s open door. Inside were a kitchen, a tiny bath and a living room.
The upstairs had a bedroom with only front and back walls standing.
After returning home to Portland, Faye and Lenny couldn’t forget about the Yacolt property. They sold their home, bought 40 of the property’s 320 acres and lived in an apartment on Faye’s parents’ farm while they worked to improve their new home. Often their four children—Renee, 11; Gayla, 7; Kimberlee, 5; and Tim, 3—would go along to the property. The children soon found that playing outdoors in the country was far different from playing outdoors in the city. Plus, more than 20 fruit trees provided apples, pears and plums—enough to fill gleaming jars with sweet treats for the winter.
Over the years, the chestnut tree, standing watch over it all, provided the fun of climbing limbs, swinging on a tire and building a treehouse. Faye found creative ways to use the overabundance of chestnuts that the kids gingerly coaxed out of their prickly green coverings. When the long, yellow strands of chestnut blossoms sent their sweet fragrance into the air, the tree hummed with the droning buzz of thousands of bees. It was the chestnut tree that had caught Lenny’s eyes as they peered over the undergrowth that first fall day, and the tree was a faithful sentinel over all that happened on the land.
In time, the four children grew up, and 44 foster children came and went. Each child played under or in that tree. Eventually, the land was subdivided and Gayla stayed in the original house.
Then, in the middle of a summer night in 2017, Gayla was awakened by an unusual sound. One giant branch of the chestnut tree had split from the trunk, hitting the shop building next to the house. Sadly, the aging chestnut was rotting from the inside out and had to come down.
Now, though a piece of history may be gone forever, the life of the chestnut tree so connected with their lives continues on in the pictures and memories of the family it enticed to live under its massive boughs.