Karl Oskar’s children were to be saved from the language difficulties he had gone through in America. How hadn’t it hindered him! How many humiliations hadn’t he endured because he couldn’t speak the country’s language. At last he managed, but like other Swedes at Chisago Lake he used his own brand of English, strongly mixed with the old language. He would never learn anything else. Lately he more and more forgot the new since he seldom went beyond his farm, and he fell back on Swedish.
He felt that his children, when outsiders were present, were ashamed of their father’s way of speaking. The children didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, how much easier it was for them. All he could do was to pretend he didn’t know they were ashamed of their father’s expressions.
With the growing children, the new language came into the house and expelled the old. It didn’t even spare the name their home had had from the beginning. Karl Oskar’s children no longer called their home New Duvemåla. They had given it another name, a name used by people who spoke of the first settlement at Chisago Lake. New Duvemåla was no more, it was gone and would never be revived. Instead it was now called the Nilsson Settlement.
— 2—
The oak grove to the east of the house still stood, covering about twenty acres of fertile land where crops could grow. For ten years Karl Oskar had had his eye on this piece of ground. Then a mild, suitable autumn arrived which was to be the grove’s last; the days of the mighty oaks were numbered.
It had taken the farmer a long time to plan his attack on the oaks; this fall the plan was completed, now he had thought it over long enough. He had figured out how to go about it, how to turn this ground into a tilled field: The giant trees would be pulled up by the roots.
Now with the boys he had sufficient help, and Karl Oskar Nilsson and his four sons approached the grove with their team one early morning. Five men and two horses — the combined strength of men and beasts would fell the old oaks.
They began with one of the largest; they dug a ditch around the tree, four feet deep, and cut the roots. They took away the foothold of the oak. This was the trick to conquer it: Deprive it of its hold. They began down at the root; when the ditch was ready two of the boys climbed up the tree with a heavy iron chain, as high as they could get. They fastened it to the trunk and the father joined it to the pull lines from the team.
Human labor had done its part, now it was the turn of the beasts; the horses would fell the tree. But the oak itself would help, its weight would facilitate its fall.
The farmer picked up the reins and urged his strong team forward which he had followed for years after harrow and plow, wagon and timber sled. Today it was hitched to the heaviest load it had ever pulled, a giant oak which for hundreds of years had stood secure on its roots. Now the old one’s footing had been undermined.
The horses obeyed their master and started to pull, concentrating all their strength until their backs straightened out and their legs and loins sank. Their hooves took hold of the ground, turf and rocks flew about, the animals tramped, moved their legs, stretched their sinews. The hooves dug into the earth. The pull lines were extended until it seemed as if they would break, the horses crouched as if ready to bolt, their backs straightened out, their hindquarters sank down. But they did not move from the spot; they stood where they were, tramped the same place. They were hitched to a load that remained stationary.
The driver of the team kept urging it on. The horses pulled again, their hooves threw up turf. This was their life’s heaviest load.
Now the oak began to tremble from the force pulling in the chains around its trunk. The enormous crown swayed slowly back and forth. The men could see that the oak was beginning to lean. Once it had started to sway, its motion would soon utilize its weight in making it fall.
The team in its place pulled again, the giant trunk was beginning to give, the lines slackened — they were long enough so the tree would not reach the team in its fall.
The farmer and his sons cried out warnings to one another, the calls echoing back and forth:
“Timber!”
“She’s coming!”
“Get away!”
The tree was leaning. A sound like an approaching storm was heard in the air — the tree had started to fall! The giant took one last heavy breath as it sank to the ground. In falling the tree had pulled up its own stump. When the branches hit the earth there was a report like a gunshot. Then the great oak lay still. It had left an empty place in the air above.
The giant was felled, the first one. Five men and two horses had gone to work on the grove — oak after oak fell, each pulling up its roots with its fall. The warning calls sounded: Keep away! She’s coming! And heavy and big she came, roaring through the air, falling with a thud, her roots in the air, her crown crushed. In the place where the tree had grown, a ditch opened, deep as a grave. Each fallen oak left room for a piece of fallow field.
It was the autumn of the great oak destruction; death ravaged the grove. The owner and his four sons cleared ground — the farmer was using all the human strength that had grown up in his house. This work by the father and his sons would complete the clearing of this farm. In the evenings, tired and pleased, they looked at the row of oaks they had felled, quietly laid down their tools, and went home.
For more than twenty years Karl Oskar had cleared wild land in America, hoed, plowed, cut. Now he had started with the last piece. He was nearing the end. When the oak grove had been cleared and tilled his farm would be completed.
— 3—
The clearing went on through the whole autumn. Karl Oskar hoped to be through before snow fell and the ground froze. And the winter was late this year, as if it wanted to aid him in his work.
It was an evening late in November. Only one oak remained, but one of the largest, a giant, almost six feet thick at arm’s height. At the time when this tree was a sapling the farmer’s parents had not yet come into the world, nor his grandparents. And when he himself saw the shore of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga for the first time, the oak had reached its full years. It had remained in its place while he felled thousands of trees around it. Now its turn had come: the autumnal storms had swayed its crown for the last time.
It was this oak the farmer was to remember.
The first blue approach of twilight appeared in the sky. The farmer’s oldest son said it was late, they were tired, and since this last oak was so big and deeply rooted it would be quite a job getting it down. It would be dark before they were through. Couldn’t they leave it till tomorrow?
The farmer replied that since only one single oak remained they would fell it too before they went home. Since it was the last one they must not leave it because of approaching evening. With the felling of this tree they could say they had completed their task. Then they could go home and rest, well satisfied.