When a Tree Becomes Lumber

I watched the elm for many years.

It stood tall and pristine, a straight trunk over fifty feet high and nearly two feet wide, and I knew what was coming. Dutch elm disease doesn’t rush; it arrives slowly—a yellowing branch, then another—thinning the crown and taking branches one by one. Each season, I examined it more closely—not just for its decline, but for its shape, its structure, and what it had already made.