There’s an ugly, dead tree at the bottom of my yard and I want it gone.

Now, before you decide I’m some nut who wants to ruin the environment, let me admit the tree is dead. Also, I live in a place where Mother Nature needs editing more than encouragement. So, I’m not some terrible industrialist laying waste to the earth.  But I am someone who lost control of my world.  And I’m fighting to get it back.

Our house sits at the back of 4/3s of an acre on the crest of a low-lying hill. Because we live on a slope and my husband does not love lawn care, much of our yard belongs to the wild things.  Trees and brush grow at the corners of the lot where birds and small animals make their homes.  As long as the foliage didn’t obscure the view or road to our house, that’s fine.  But then the ugly tree came along.

It came up during one of our 48-hour springs that seem to launch straight into summer. In March, it was a straight little sapling that hugged the edge of the road.  By fall, it was too big for my loppers to cut down. Soon, insidious vines twisted around the tree, warping the trunk and obscuring the view of the house. Still, I never seemed to find the right moment to cut it back. Either I was dealing with some career or personal issue, or working on something for school, going to or recovering from my full-time job, taking care of the house, or writing.  All of that is hard to do, especially when you’re carrying an extra 130 pounds in weight. So, every year, I missed my chance to cut back the tree and its vines during the dormant season.  And every year, I gained more weight and my health got worse.

I finally realised the tree and my weight both belong to me: they are my problems, my responsibility. I started losing weight, not all the weight I need to lose, but enough to go after that ugly, dead tree.

And I can tell you ugly dead trees don’t give up without a fight. First off, the vines around it are still living and fibrous and it takes work just to get them away.  Also, the tree is surrounded by a ton of kudzu, stickle-briar and urushiol-bearing plants, all equipped with their own thorny defense systems.  And the tree itself is a particularly dense hardwood. Yes, this would have been easier if I had a chainsaw but powered tools aren’t good for klutzes like me.  Instead, I brought my small hatchet, a hand mitre saw and my inadequate 2″ loppers to the job, as well as a pair of gloves and 911 programmed into my cell phone. (I am very accident prone.) I hacked away with the hatchet until I quit making headway and then swapped to the saw and loppers, trying to slice through the trunk of that tree. Twenty-five minutes after starting, I was sweating, breathless, blistered and the ugly tree was still standing. (I’d also picked up a winter case of poison ivy but I didn’t know that at the time.) I was ready to quit. Then I realised the tree was more than a tree and I was working on two problems at once.

I’m not lying when I say my unhealthy weight is a problem that I’ve fought for decades. Decades. Like the vines on the sapling, it’s grown and tightened a grip on my life until I was almost as bad off as that tree.  Over the last nine months, I’ve whittled away a lot of pounds through exercise, healthier choices, and even surgery, but, like the tree, the rest of my extra weight hasn’t fallen yet. My unhealthy life patterns aren’t giving up without a fight.  And, if I turn my back on them now, those unhealthy vines will start creeping back.  So,  in spite of the cold, the rain and the poison ivy, I’m determined to keep hacking until the tree is down and the vines are ground up for mulch.  It’s become a symbol of something else I want gone from my life.

Yes, the tree isn’t giving up easily.  Then again, neither am I.