Skip to main content

Some Long Time to Come

The Basking Ridge Presbyterian Church oak tree, said to be about 600 years old--perhaps the oldest white oak tree in America--is dead.

General George Washington picnicked with the Marquis de Lafayette in the shade of that tree, and George Whitfield, notable preacher, preached to 3000 people beneath those branches in 1740.  That may be what triggered the eventual demise of the tree.  A tree, even a really tough old tree, can only take so much.

About the time World War II was ending, our parents bought a little, scrabby subsistence farm from two Swedish brothers, in Washington State:  the Seastrom brothers, Pete and Swan.  The end of the graveled driveway into the farm circled around a well-worn maple tree that had none of the magnificence of the Basking Ridge tree in New Jersey.  Our maple tree did not defy gravity:  it hung on.  If I am not misled by age and nostalgia, it had obvious signs of brutal trimming.

I do not know, but I should be astonished if it is still there.  Something like me.  I am astonished, too.  Still here.  Glad to be here.

Trees have a special place in memory.  There were two other trees on that same little farmstead that I still think about.  The more delightful one was a small birch tree by the gate.  It was not one of those enforced-triplet plantings gardeners used to like to plant.  It stood lonesomely, more spreading than whip-like, probably reminding Pete and Swan of something they remembered from Sweden.

The third--actually a group of trees--was a holly tree that Dad had brought home from a neighbor's yard because they were tired of dealing with prickliness.  Dad had, absurdly trimmed off the lower branches, probably to make it easier to coax them into their new neighborhood; possibly because he wanted to be the first to display a holly topiary.  Likely not.  Just a bad idea.

It is hard to love a holly tree up close and personal; something like having a porcupine for a pet.

When I lived in northeast Iowa, years later, for years-and-years, our wonderful, old Queen Anne house shared a large bur oak with Bert Lennon, planted precisely on our property lines.  A later owner of that house once decided to cut that oak down, and started by lopping off lower branches.  They irritated him.  Oak trees produce prodigious branches, wheelbarrow loads of acorns, and truckloads of autumn leaves on the lawn.

I bolted out the front door, bellowing, insisting that the tree was as much mine as his, and that it was not coming down.  It stayed up.  It continued to produce acorns, and little oak trees in the flower beds.  I transplanted one, something like an heir to the tradition, to the other side of the yard, between us and Wilma Slaughter.  It is still there, producing its own offspring and brown blanket of leaves.

Several of the descendents of that older oak are growing out on the land where I built a log house.  Some were deliberate.  Some hid in the root balls of the spirea bushes Wilma asked me to remove from around her front porch, which I thought should have a chance to live down the side the the long, curved drive at our log house.  And they do, gently coloring each springtime.

Maybe, some long time to come. . . .





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there
Post a Comment
Read more