What follows I wrote shortly after the surprising late autumn snow of 2011.  It ends up being about oaks.  It will serve as a ground for some subsequent things.

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Toward the end of October 2011 we had a snow, and that’s very early for just north of Boston. The uncommonness was compounded by the fact that the autumn was very warm – in fact, up until the time of the snow there had not been a killing frost – two weeks late. The congruence of these unusual circumstances led the snowfall to be far more damaging than an ordinary six inch drop would normally be. The leaves caught and held the snow, whereas at most times they would not have been there or, dead, would have fallen off at the weight of the snow. If you cannot tell, this essay is about oak trees. This introduction is just to bring a sense of immediacy.

I have an oak, a chinkapin oak, in my sideyard. It stands now at more than a dozen feet and it’s roughly eight years old. This tree is special to me for a few reasons. The first – I planted it as an acorn. I’d venture it is an infinitesmal percentage of oaks that are hand planted from seed, so that I’d call a rare bond. The tree grew in a pot it’s first year nicely and then I picked a very sunny spot for it in the sideyard. I had chosen this kind of oak, a chinkapin, because it was reported to be fast growing, because it was not among the oaks regular to my environment, because it leaves were different, because it was said it could tolerate the cold nonetheless. In the spot I had chosen it grew nicely, passing my height by it’s fourth year.

Pruning some low growth that year I was very impressed with the health of the leaves. They screamed good things, abundance, strength, beauty, so before bestowing the pruned branches on the bramble pile I removed from these branches some almost a hundred leaves and, macerating them, put them in a jar of water to steep. I left them there for two months before putting the soaked leaves in the garden of Ganesh (that’s another story) and reserving the oak leaf saturated water to my growing catalog of home grown potion ingredients (that’s another story too).

On with this fourth summer. Sometime in mid July a drought came – it did not rain at all for weeks on end and it was very hot. I did not imagine that a tree would be vulnerable like to this but I turned around one day and it’s leaves were brown (this was in late August) and no amount of water seemed to encourage it to sprout new leaves or shoots. Sad I was, and quite, but it seemed there was naught to do. When Spring came after waiting till long after oaks are supposed to show signs of life (June) I cut it at it’s base and saved the trunk at least to make a walking stick, the wood being straight and strong. I peeled the bark from the trunk and gathered a quarts worth of that too, for it was thick and resilient despite the dehydration the tree suffered and I added water and set that too to steep.

I was surprised and delighted when, not three weeks from the acceptance of loss, up came roughly a dozen shoots from the sheered base. More a bush than a tree now but alive I decided to let all the shoots grow. I figured that over the years I could remove them a few each year till a tree form was re-attained, but in the mean time more leaves would nurture the root system better than less.

Fast forward to the present, right before this snow, only three stalks remain and it’s twice my height, taller tan it has ever been. Again I believed in this tree, not even thinking that the weather, however unusual, would be of consequence to it. The whole story, rooted in my youth, of oak trees not (much) bending whereas the grass is always bending, and some lame pilosopher talking about how we should be like the grass so as to survive. Humbug, I said, as I gave my exit interview to the Dean when dropping out of college – the grass does not get to live the life of an oak tree. It lives the life of bending. Better, I said, to live the life of an oak tree and bend less and break if need be, than lay down for any foolish wind that cares to blow.

This tree, that had earned the name ‘The Ressurection Oak’, had once again demonstrated great perspicacity. Unlike my idealizations of oak behavior it had bent, bent to the ground in three directions, one per stalk, under the weight of the snow. I shook the snow off each stalk and marvelled at the healthy leaves and more at the breadth of moves this tree held. Today it stands as if this never happened.

Walking around the yard that morning another oak with a little personal history caught my eye. This one was embedded in the wood, at perhaps a depth of 15 feet, when first we moved in. We had been reshaping the boundaries here and there as time progressed and I selected this tree as being of such dignity (and it was, a single trunk rising to a height perhaps of fifteen feet before branching into two shafts still directed mostly upward and spreading together into a wonderful crown) and such strength as to clear any competitors near it (mongrel wild cherries mostly). Over the years it’s thickness had doubled and its height taken off, till it was clear that it would massively raise the canopy around it, none nearby could contest or catch it, and in a stately manner each year it augmented itself. This tree had suffered some losses. Three upper branches, probably four or five inches thick and twenty feet in length had snapped and were held by shreds of bark and wood pointing downward, great ornaments of injury.

Looking at the whole of it, the tree and it’s prospects, this was a good outcome in the sense that it was very rational. What could not be supported was lost. What was kept was more than enough to regain what was lost, and in far less time than originally taken to develop it. It’s a red oak, very common around here, but a very nice one. I have to think too about it’s wisdom.

Of course this saga of paying attention to oaks goes back a long way. In my backyard as a child there were exactly three. Two black, one white, not that I understood the differences then. They used to get gypsy moth caterpillars each spring and we used to capture them and subject them to awful childhood experiments. There were oak tress all around he neighborhood then and when it was acorn time, and some to these years must have been mast years, there were so many and they were so full of life and beauty that one had to gather them, not that one knew a use. I remember bringing a bucket of them, hand picked as the best, to the mother of one of my friends. She said that the Indians ate them but that they must have had a special trick because they were poison if you just tried to eat them plain. I remember for while being fascinated to open them.

Later, in my twenties, living an urban life, sometimes when walking by the river in autumn there would be a great crop of them, screaming abundance, strength, beauty and I would have to gather the best of them and set them on my table, if only to admire them. Even later still, just last year in fact, I took my younger daughter out on a quest, that we would gather acorns and figure out what the Indians did and make something to eat out of them. The research was not difficult and at the end we had made acorn butter (sweetened with honey) and acorn chocolate chip cookies. That felt good. In the course of doing the research I saw a remark that in the history of humankind more acorns have been eaten than all the grains combined. This to me was a moment of Neanderthal resonance, as if the desire I experienced seeing an acorn was somehow a matter of some natural selection, that I was made to eat acorns, that acorns where part of human destiny, a part we scorn at unknown peril.

That’s the whole story on oaks and acorns in my life, for the time being. I know the years will bring more abundance, strength and beauty from them, God willing, as they say. It’s something to be glad about, thankful for, happy with.