High River has a well-established urban forest with a variety of mature trees throughout the townsite. When a tree reaches the end of its life and becomes unsafe for the community, it’s typically cut down. That is until longtime, 20-year resident Lee Peckham came up with a way to honor those old growth trees by having wood carvers turn the stumps into public art. “I felt like there has to be something better we can do,” she said. “I thought it was important that an Indigenous carver started the project so I contracted Jared Tailfeathers and he did the first two trees and it’s just taken off since then.” Peckham says there are now 10 carved trees in town. The artists are paid for their work, much of it coming from revenue the town receives from film and television production companies who shoot in High River. Patty Dippolito -- aka The Country Carver -- spent the better part of seven days working on the town’s latest tree project along Highwood Trail South. “I wanted to do something whimsical, colorful, (and) bright,” she said. “When you see carvings, you see bears and eagles and all that and there’s a lot of kids around here that will appreciate it. “I just wanted something happy, you know?” The process Dippolito says this is the largest piece she’s ever worked on. Before she carved anything, she first sketched an idea that was submitted to the town for approval. Then she used a chainsaw to carve her images onto the three massive branches and then a Dremel tool for the fine detail. Finally, she painted the finished carving. “If you see pictures before I coloured it, you can’t really tell (what the images are), it doesn’t pop out at you,” she said. “But once you colour them, they kind of jump out at you and then you can kind of get a story out of it.” Rave reviews Peckham says the finished trees are getting rave reviews from people in town and visitors alike. “We don’t maintain them, they are going to just naturally go back to the earth,” she said. “And in that spirit, we are using all environmentally-friendly products to paint and to stain them.” ‘They create a masterpiece’ Cathy Couey, Town of High River councilor says the project is led by people who want to improve their community. She says none of the trees being carved are healthy. “They become a risk,” she said. “So this is just when they’re deemed unsafe, they are definitely run through a scrutiny of tests and if they’re deemed well enough, then they’re cut to a certain height, the artist gets kind of the visual of what they see and then they create a masterpiece.” Couey says the project has become so popular, the town wants to make the carvings easy for visitors to find. “We’re looking right now at creating a map so when people come to High River, they can open up the map and they can find where the tree locations are,” she said. “They’re just they’re beautiful, they’re whimsical, they’re fun and depict lots of different things - the artists get to choose the theme.” Peckham works with the town’s arborist to identify potential candidates to carve and right now has three on her list. She says 10 trees have been carved in the last four years.
