It has been a couple of weeks since the Black Hills were hit by too much snow, unbelievable winds topping 70 miles an hour, loss of livestock and in some cases homes. Slowly we have dug out. The broken trees and limbs were everywhere and will be for years to come. But chain saws, wood chippers and hours of back breaking work has put the world back into some kind of order–More and more each day. Dick and I drove up Spearfish Canyon last Sunday. It is sad to see so many mighty trees, oak,ash, box elder and even, to a lesser degree pine and spruce with their heads hung and limbs twisted and torn. But the ones that seemed the saddest to me were the birches. Then it dawned on me. I was thinking of Robert Frost’s poem Birches.
Birches by Robert Frost
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
Ice-storms do that…
And perhaps so does wind and snow and cold..