Spring Valley has a number of paved trails, and if you follow the one toward the cabin, you’ll find an enormous white tree not far from the property’s main pond. An enormous, mostly white, all dead tree.

You might say that it’s passed on. This tree is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late tree. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. Its metabolic processes are now history. It’s kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. This is an ex-tree.

A large dead tree can be a marvel. Nearly 30 years ago, I ran across a massive one in Mount Rainier Nat’l Park, a “fallen tree trunk bigger than a van. It’s on its side and looks ancient, with gray old roots reaching into the air to twice my height, clawing out in every direction.”

One of these days, unless the Schaumburg Park District removes the thing, the white tree might come crashing down into the pond. Like this smaller (but still fairly large) tree once did. With any luck, it’ll fall some windy night when no one’s around, maybe making a loud crash, maybe not. (How would we know?)