It seems to me that Kittery is, among other things, the capital of the Sumac trees. Or at least, the capital of and the center and haven of the sumac trees of and in Maine. They all seemed to be clustered in Kittery. One of the largest thickets of sumac is on the outskirts of a deserted, weed-strewn, dusty lot in Kittery, that lies between the Pelkey Funeral Home and the faded, smoldering, crumbling ruin of an ancient gas station, on the low ridge of a hill overlooking the paradisaical Kittery Traffic Circle. It is a massive thicket, so thick that it's leaves are all that can be seen from the road, from Route 1 Bypass. And I have driven past it many times, often in awe of those trees that were such a part of my childhood. Indeed, where I lived in Kittery, our yard had several sumac trees and at least one or two sumac groves or thickets...plus on the hill, a makeshift, natural, nemoral rotary of our own: for a small, circular thicket with no sumac trees, or few sumacs at any rate, bounded all around by one rotatory dirt trail that encircled it. A path upon which many a childhood footrace that I participated in, was run...although, to the best of my memory, I rarely won. Yet it was often under the grey, branching bark and bifurcated limbs and trunks of the green or multihued leaves of a sumac tree or trees that I played. Thus, when I see them now, they never fail to remind me of my childhood in Kittery and that seaside or riparian neighborhood in which I lived there for 13 years...and the trees and champaigns I played around. Champaign, of course meaning, "plain' or "field." Among the grassy, verdurous surface of many a boreal or austral champaign I played. Now, of course, things are quite different and I haven't visited the main site and capital of my childhood-that particular neighborhood and that junglelike yard at 12 Bridge Street-in at least ten years. Not to say that I haven't been frequently to Kittery, though, for I have been there several times, or at least I have passed through there, treating it like a corridor, a conduit, on my way to Eliot or to Portsmouth or to Newington (itself a seeming harbor of sumac trees, even if its collection of them does not begin to approach that of Kittery's) or to farther points. Indeed, even last night, as I did a great deal in 2008 and 2009, I went to the Kittery Maytag Launderette, which is open 24 hours, and did my laundry. Four loads worth of it. But that is not important to this. I just wonder sometimes if other people, especially those who lived or who still live in Kittery, remember the sumacs and have similar stories to report. Or at least, if they never played beneath their often fuzzy-leafed, rough-trunked grey xyloidal selves, then I wonder if they have ever noticed the stark profusion of sumac trees in their hometown. Not that I would ever point this fact out so as to insure the annihilation of such trees; for, being as they are landmarks of my childhood, and ones that evoke strong, oft-pleasant memories, I would never wish their destruction...though ironically, as a lad, I often took stick to sumac neonates and saplings and beat them to fuzzy-leafed rags. Maybe I didn't have the appreciation for them then that I do now. But in a way, as Kittery is in places, so nearly infested with sumacs, then perhaps I played a crucial role as a stick-brandishing child, and helped to stem the fervid tide of sumac-infestation; an infestation that surely would have overrun us all and conquered Kittery entire. Often though, sumacs only seem to grow and flourish in green, junglelike or marshy areas. Indeed, in areas that are at least partly deserted. They are an oddly reclusive tree-despite, of course, their sheer numbers. Another thing I have observed about them is that they tropical-seeming or Israeli-like or appearing to actually originate and therefore belong in some Arabic clime. It seems they have been taken from their homes in the Middle East and brought to America, specifically New England, more specifically Maine and New Hampshire, to grow and flourish. Yet they, as beautiful, odd and exotic as they are, don't really belong, don't really fit in our temperate clime. However, here they seem to flourish...unlike their supposedly native Arabia, where it doesn't seem that any exist anymore-if they ever did. For so has my recent research into it revealed: namely, nothing. At least, nothing in any Arabic, Syrian, Lebanese or otherwise Middle-Eastern locale. No; even as tropical as they are, they are ours. And, in my childhood, you could say they were mine. Yet many another type of tree did I like, play around, and think that I owned back then, too. And one time, in trying to climb one, I splintered and most likely killed a sumac tree-but this one was full grown. In spring and summer, the sumac often secretes an interesting, exotic, pleasantly odorous, aromatic fragrance that some people have, in my youth, been silly and stupid, misinformed and paranoid enough to think of as a indication of them being, in actuality, cannabis or marijuana plants. Yet, naturally, this is not true. For the fragrance being emitted in vernal periods by leafy-boughed sumac trees, which are actually like tall shrubs, really; it is not that intoxicating or hallucinogenic of an aroma. Albeit it summons up feeling of narcosis in me now. But if anyone has ever had one great heavenly moment in their childhood, when they remember it fondly, they will be taken away by it and will be summarily intoxicated by it and by the overwhelming power of that memory-as have I been by my memories....and my recent observations in that locality that is now but a corridor or a conduit to Portsmouth or Eliot: Kittery. The land of my youth. The homeland of my halcyon days. I feel as if I could prate on about it and about sumac trees and their pivotal role in my formative years, but no one besides myself would ever want to read such a writing nor sit through it long enough. Thus, this piece is now done. Maybe some day I will expand evermore on this subject-but not right now.
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