The Two or More Arizonan Trees that Form the Gateway to The Route One Half of Wilson Road: A Description 6/04

I know that I have written too much of Kittery lately, but so what? I grew up there, for God's sake! I have an affinity to the municipality...is that such a crime? Besides, I wish to one day not only describe as fully and clearly as I can all the districts of Kittery in which I have set foot in my time as a resident there (1985-1998), but also to tell the domestic and scholastic histories of my life there: my Kitteryian Autobiography. Thus, there are notes, blogs, pieces, stories, episodes and vignettes of and describing portions of my stint there. And this is just one-of many. Regardless, though Kittery is in Maine and is mostly rural and suburban and forested, as well as being quite littoral, in it's more urban and commercial zones, such as those that line Route One: The Kittery Outlet Malls, in point of fact; they have elements out of place. Things, like trees for instance, that do not seem to belong there. For instance, and forming the basis of this essay, there are the Arizonan pines that stand at the edge of the overpass that leads down to the Kittery Outlet Malls and especially the Kittery Trading Post..long a standard, if annoying, ugly and poorly-built commerical fixture in and of Kittery. Something that mars it...for that building, even in it's recent renovation, is exceedingly hideous and dangerous...but that is a subject for a different post. No; rather, I mean to speak of how the trees at the edge of the roaring, car-filled highway below, are so very Arizonan. They are tall pines, with rough, gnarled, rugouse, brownish bark and trunks, and their needles and leaves stand high above their roots. And those needles are green and are clusterlike. They resemble little circular, green, outspreading needlelike frozen explosions and they are heavy with phallic yellow-brown pinecones and seem to soar upward at at least one hundred feet above their firmly planted, inextricable roots. Also, they make the air fragrant and heavy with their piny perfumes...all these things and more (like perhaps their proximity to such a place as a store like the KTP...which is hunterly and outdoor-intensive...much like the pines and their piny, balsamic boughs and trunks) make them seem Arizonan...or of and from or resembling Arizona. To which state I've never been. Tomorrow, I will write something different, perhaps even actually fictional, instead of these essayistic, confessional, descriptive things that so often only focus on trees, hills or champaigns...the plain, not the drink. Well, for today, the completeness of the Arizonan/arboreal/piny thought being discharged in full, I am done.