Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

The Old One is the name we gave to an oak tree that stood in an area off the end of our driveway. It was really, really tall with an enormous circumference. About ten years ago, it started to lean. Each year, it leaned a bit more until the roots on its north side were partially pulled from the earth and the tree leaned on a huge loblolly (Southern pine). We didn’t want to think about taking it down, and even though we worried that it might drop on someone, maybe a car going up our driveway, we couldn’t touch it.

When we were in Maine this summer, we received a frantic call from our daughter. “There’s a tree down on the driveway, a huge one. There was a huge whump when it fell.”

I looked at my husband. “So the Old One has finally fallen.”

But it wasn’t our…