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Prying out a stump reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place. Though he was not a sentimental man – he did not cry when his children died, he simply dug the graves and buried them – James was silent each time he killed a tree, thinking of its time spent in that spot. He never did this with the animals he hunted – they were food, and transient, passing through this world and out again, as people did. But trees felt permanent – until you had to cut them down.
