I have been going through photos to understand what about the old house we liked and what we did not so we could think about how best to build our new one. Tonight I ran across a photo with the edge of a ficus tree we had. It was one of the things I had forgotten about.

The tree was in poor shape before the fire but of course has been consigned to ash. It had an adventurous life before it passed on. We bought it in 1996 after we moved back to the “lower 48” from a couple of years teaching in Alaska. When we moved back to Idaho from New Hampshire in 1999, the tree rode in the back seat right behind the driver. We moved at Christmas that year and the entire 3 day drive was in the snow and ice. We stopped overnight in Rock Springs, Wyoming because the weather was very bad. I wrapped the tree in my coat to protect it from the blizzard. I could not run to get inside to where it was warm because the ground was completely covered in ice and snow.

We got the tree inside and out the next day when the roads opened again. It lived with us in Idaho for 13 years before succumbing to the fire.

I miss that tree even though it used to dump leaves all over the kitchen floor.