For some prairie folk, the sight of a certain grain elevator on the horizon speaks of home. Or it might be the hills behind the home place or the hills visible from the office window. A mountain range. A distinctive barn. A lake or pond that reflects the sky as you round that last corner before the home place comes into view.
Certain geographic or structural features meld themselves in our minds with thoughts of that one place on earth that will always have its metaphorical roots wrapped around our hearts.
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For those with roots in southwestern Alberta, that touchstone is the Burmis tree. If you’ve travelled Highway 3 through the Crowsnest Pass, you’ve seen it. Canada’s most photographed tree also adorns myriad postcards, coffee table books and photo albums.
As I write this, a photograph of the twisted and wind-pummeled limber pine looks over my shoulder. The photo, with an accompanying caption, was a gift from journalism mentor David Bly, now of the Calgary Herald.
“It’s the winds of adversity that shape us and give us character,” is the caption he wrote.
Bly knows the tree well, so it was fitting that he also wrote the story in the March 17 Herald that told of recent vandalism to the picturesque pine. One of its limbs – and it doesn’t have many – was broken off by vandals, to the dismay of all who know and love it.
For an estimated 300 to 400 years, the tree has clung to a rocky outcropping near Burmis, and a harsher spot one would be hard-pressed to find. It stands against strong winds and thirsts in an area that is often dry. Its roots are thrust into cracks of limestone and one has to wonder at the tenacity of the seed and the sapling that survived and once thrived.
The tree was already several centuries old when it watched Turtle Mountain crumble and bury much of a small town. Now its branches frame the rubble of Frank Slide.
Though it died about 25 years ago, the tree still stands. Tourists ogle it, summer brides pose by it and local residents take pride in it. All of that makes the vandalism more perplexing.
“A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees,” wrote English poet William Blake. Clearly he knew whereof he spoke.
Crowsnest Pass residents are determined to protect and even repair the tree if it’s possible. That’s what we do with touchstones, in whatever shape they take.
They ground us, and their tenacious roots are wrapped around our hearts.
