A portion of the White Spruce trees we planted in 1974. Fifty years ago this month, with the help of a friend, I started hand-planting trees in a fifteen acre poplar woods in Roseau County bordered on the west by Mikinaak Creek (the Ojibwe spelling for snapping turtle and not what is written in English on the maps), and a neighbor’s fenced quarter section on its east, where just the summer before, the farmer had bulldozed all the trees and windrowed their debris like a hay field prior to baling. I was thunderstruck by their destruction, for that dense woodland lent the creek bottom and my quaint homestead the beauty and privacy I desired, having lived in a city all my life to that point. Its horrific loss underscored to me that I could do nothing about what my neighbors did on their land, and if I wanted such an environment, I would have to plant it myself. And so I have with the help of family and friends, as planting trees became the best decision I have ever made concerning th