Cherry Tree Lane

Today seemed on the verge of being the first day of spring so I took a walk down APA Road (named for the Alaska Packers Association cannery) to visit the cherry trees on Cherry Tree Lane. That’s my own name for something which has no name and almost has no existence. I first saw them maybe ten or twelve springs ago…a half dozen cherry trees, neatly lined up on each side of a narrow pathway on the north side of APA. The pathway led, precisely, to nowhere. And yet, I knew it must have once led to somewhere. There must have been a house to which those trees invited friends to come in for a cup of whatever. There must have been kids who walked up that little lane after a day in school. This abandoned house had been for a long time, apparently, more than abandoned: absolutely disappeared, with no sign of the house’s previous placement even.

During most of the year, you’d barely notice the trees, but in April (or sometimes March) when the fruit trees begin to bud out, these six trees spring into bloom. And so they are beginning to do this week. The picture above is from the first time I ever saw them.

In the intervening years, I made a quilt from the picture and added those children I was sure had been there. And in the intervening years, someone came and bought the land and added a new big driveway twenty feet or so from the cherry trees. The driveway, in the nature of driveways, travels a goodly distance back to a modern house that in no way resembles the kind of house that was once there. You know that, even if you have never seen that original house. The cherry trees now looked strangely dwarfed by the new driveway, but in spring, this week, if you stand right in front of them, all the changes wash away, and they are there as they were back maybe 50 years ago. And even farther, when a neighbor (Mrs. Gudmanson?) brought the tree starts over.

For me, because I live in this part of Point Roberts, Cherry Tree Lane is one of the most memorable parts of this small peninsula. Whoever planted them can hardly have imagined they would still be here in the 21st century, still capturing our hearts and imaginations! Our gratitude goes to the new owners who were gracious enough, knowing enough, to leave them where they were in the trees' declining years.