Life and Island Times – June 4 2016
Men Who Talk With Trees Part I
During the island fires two years ago, Marlow’s yard was awash in fire ash. The orange red residue was piling up and staining everything in sight, including W’s much beloved German sports car.
Something had to be done. Upon consultation with his next door neighbor, Wisconsin, Marlow reached out to a local tree trimmer.
Kenny King, owner of Golden Bough Tree Trimming, was Wisconsin’s go-to-guy. King never trimmed or cut down trees without a permit from the local Tree Commission. He was always successful in his permit applications since he only worked on protected trees which threatened to damage a house or fall and hurt passersby.
It took King eight weeks to arrange to trim Marlow’s fire tree. When the appointed day arrived, King and his longtime assistant arrived with bucket truck and industrial sized wood chipper in tow. They made a strange couple. King was a short statured man of few words. His helper was a giant of a man, who was gregarious.
Marlow observed this pair work effortlessly to trim some 8 tons of dead and unhealthy wood from the 50 year old Royal Poinciana tree. Within four hours the job was done and the yard was spic and span. One odd thing was that they did not chip all the trimmed branch wood. Many of the bigger limbs were neatly trimmed and stacked atop the wood chipper collection box. Thinking nothing of it at the time, Marlow paid Kenny what he owed and they parted ways.
It wasn’t until Marlow heard stories from others about Kenny did things become clearer. Seeking to confirm what he was hearing Marlow looked up Kenny on the web and found his Key West home. King’s backyard was almost entirely filled with woodpiles of curing logs and tree planks. Upon closer inspection the bulk of it was mahogany. Apparently, King was a tree addict.
Looking the pair up at another island job site, Marlow queried Kenny’s assistant. He quietly said out of Kenny’s earshot that Kenny’s wife was always saying to him “If you take our wood, I’ll give you a bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne.”
Marlow motioned for the giant to keep his voice down. The giant responded that Kenny couldn’t hear them, even with Kenny’s chainsaw turned off. “When he’s up there, he’s talking to the tree.”
The giant then whispered, “He would give away his children rather than part with a plank of his beloved mahogany.” The assistant said as he turned to start clearing dropped limbs that Marlow should look up another even worse tree addict up the keys. Someone named Kepler.
Marlow thought nothing of this brief aside until the past spring, when he met Nick Downs of Caring Tree Service when Nick felled the Two Sisters for Wisconsin. He asked Nick about Kepler.
Nick graciously provided Marlow Kepler’s full name. Armed with this, Marlow found the following:
Jack Kepler looks over a cypress knee in his domain: the shop below his home in the Florida Keys. He plans to use the wood in a mural for his home office. The novelist James W. Hall calls Kepler’s home “Mr. Natural’s cathedral.” It is built from salvaged tropical hardwoods and has winding staircases and magnificent decks.
To be continued.
Copyright © 2016 From My Isle Seat