OWL-DRAGON

Trees

"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind...."
"Our chestnut tree is in full blossom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year...."

Anne Frank

As you may have read, Anne Frank’s chestnut tree will be cut down because of disease. It was about a hundred and fifty years old.

Last year a dead runner shared with a time lapse movie he had complied from a series of photos taken over a years time.

Inspired by that, for the last year, every week I have taken a photograph of a tree on the grounds of Tyler Arboretum. I carried my camera on every Friday trail run and no matter what path I took I made sure I passed the tree. When I knew I was going to be away or for some other reason couldn’t run on Friday I would hike in as close to the day as I could. I even walked thru a couple of feet of snow to get to the tree.
Two weeks ago I had a very nice run in near peak fall foliage. My tree, an oak, never displayed much color my I was anxious to see how it looked. My normal approach is down a wooded path then out onto a field (the same field where I saw the fox kits last spring). The path runs between the woods and the field gradually climbing and curving.

As soon as I came out into the open I sensed something was awry. Normally, I could momentarily see the top of my tree before it was hidden by turn of the trail. But not that day. A little further on I could see the tree still in full leaf but it was obvious that something was very wrong. It was lying low to the ground – Iwas seeing the top of the tree. I hurried forward and my worst fears were confirmed. The tree was down – cracked and splintered at the base. I couldn’t believeit; it had never looked unhealthy. But I could see the rot deep inside. I walked all around it wanting not to be so.
Later in the week I spoke to a volunteer at the Arboretum. She said a neighbor had been working in her yard and heard the tree groaning and creaking. There was not a great wind but suddenly the tree toppled. They believe the tree was more than a hundred years old. They have posted a sign asking that no one cut anything from the tree – they hope to save the wood for a project in Arboretum.
The lost of the great trees always saddens me even though I know it is part a nature’s course. Anne’s tree has been saved in a small way. Cuttings were made and a stripling will be planted, but, of course, many years will past before it is a great tree.

That is the way with trees: they are likely to long outlive us seemingly unchanging, but when gone they leave a gap not easily filled.
My tree is gone and there is probably no cutting to replace it, but the Arboretum mindful of its legacy has been planting trees this year. Encased in plastic to protect them from deer they aren’t much to look at now but hopefully in a hundred years they will awe some hiker even as I was awed by my oak.