My dreadful absence...

          Hello to my still-faithful Fir friends. I am aware of the length of my leave (over two months without any posting whatsoever), but I will give you the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me Firs. A lesser man would make a great spectacle of himself as he attempted to excuse his absence. I, for one, will not bog myself down into a tangle of lies and dreadful excuses. However, I do have such an excuse.
          I was in an accident.
          Having been released from the hospital just yesterday, surely you can forgive me.
          What happened, you may ask? Well, it all started when my campaign team caught wind of a secret press conference over the upcoming election where I was to be discussed. No, they'd never let me inside the conference room, but I knew of just the right person to infiltrate the meeting incognito... my buddy Matt Treesman. We've been the best of friends since we were saplings and I have nothing but trust and respect for this guy. What, you say you've never heard of him before? Exactly. He's been a highly valued member of Team Fir and a very supportive friend from the start of my sojourn through the world of politics, but we've always made an effort to keep his identity under wraps. I had never known before when our little secret would come in handy, but at that moment I knew.
          My private investigation team, though usually reserved for matters involving the evil schemes of Coniferous Pine, immediately embarked on finding the location of the event and the safest route to drive. Within hours I had a MapQuest in hand to lead Matt and me, strangely, to the dregs of a New Orleans suburb. Something in my mind should've clicked then, but my will was too strong.
          Normally I wouldn't go along (or my bodyguards wouldn't allow me to), but I knew I'd be the one driving Matt on this trip, as it always is. You see, he had a dreadful accident in the car when he was a teen. Matt was unharmed only physically-- the emotional scarring stemming from the incident has been immeasurable. Since then, I've been the one driving us around; that's fine with me. I enjoy the feeling of sailing down an open country road, watching the Fir trees stream by on either side of the road. It's medicinal.
         A few hours into the drive, the road grew bumpy. It was a paved road ( though long since repaired), but there were no other cars around so I wasn't concerned. But as the road began to contain more and more potholes and I had to start swerving around them, I was concerned for our safety. But Matt was fast asleep next to me and I couldn't bare to wake him up to only worry him more. I made the decision to keep driving just as the storm started and heavy rain poured down on the windshield.
          The downpour continued, hindering my sight of the road ahead. A large bump passed under the car, flinging Matt's body forward and striking his head on the dashboard. He gasped with a started wheeze. "Sorry, Matt. This road's pretty bad and I can hardly see where I'm--" The car suddenly skidded off the slippery road, hurling us toward a cavernous, rocky, muddy ditch as I tried to gain control. That's all I remember.
          Waking up in the hospital for the first time, my groggy eyes were stunned to see a thick layer of bandages on my leg and my limp arm held in a structured splint. "Wha..." I choked. A doctor, dressed in his sterile whites, rose from a chair in the corner of my room. "Don't worry; all of your limbs are still alive and attached. Your left arm and leg took a pretty brutal beating. We found severe soft tissue damage as well as several barbarically broken bones. You'll recover in time." I coughed, unable to reply to such news. "Wh...where's Matt...?" I whispered. "Your friend? He escaped narrowly with only a few scratches. That boy saved your life, Mr. Fir." Matt? Brave in a car wreck? Saving me? Even with Matt's irrational phobia of car wrecks that we've lived through together for decades, I knew it was true. That was my Matt.
          With the help of the doctors and the incredible and inspiring selflessness of Matt, I've recovered enough in the past two months to return to my Virginia home. It'll be a much longer road to complete my healing, but each day in physical therapy is getting me a little closer to being myself again. Matt's moved nearby to help out with my therapy and I couldn't be more grateful or have a better friend.
          Once I started reading the news again I found out what became of the convention in New Orleans. As I had recalled earlier, New Orleans contains my mortal enemy's headquarters. It was a set-up by Coniferous Pine to take my life. He planted the stories in the paper about it and had the building ready to detonate mid-meeting. The conference hall's occupants and everyone near it was killed in a fiery explosion. I'm starting a memorial fund in their names to assure such tragedy will never again happen at the cruel hands of Coniferous Pine.
          I'm living one day at a time now. Every day I think about what I do have: my life, family, friends. For those things I am eternally grateful. It's a great day to be alive.

Douglas Fir