An oak tree is a gracious host, standing roadside for a century, reaching out to the hayfields and the scurrying travelers with an offer of shade.
The hillbilly relatives grow wild, untamed up on the ridges and in the secret valleys hidden from the road, roaring with laughter as the night winds carouse. If they could make moonshine, they would.
A certain red oak is a country squire, standing quietly at the edge of the forest, watching the squirrels watch out for hawks.
Half of it fell last year, and we cut up the branches, split ‘em, stacked ‘em, and waited.
Now the cold is here, but the oak is still gracious, throwing off heat from the stove through the long winter night.
The more I wander through the green shadows, and push boards through the saw, and crouch in front of a merry blaze in December, the more I like trees.
It’s a shame when they have to cut down a big old fellow. But not all boards and not all fires are from that.
Sometimes they fall, and I pick ‘em up, and use them again.
I built a Christmas present out of a cherry tree that gave out suddenly one spring afternoon with a crash, and some gnarly old barnboard run many times through the planer.
Now they’ll live forever.
I’m sitting here in a short sleeved shirt that was a gift from a friend who’s gone and left too soon, warmed by her memory and the oak hearts crackling in the stove.
–Josh
The largest, oldest oak on the road you used to live on fell about a month ago. It was mostly dead and scary to run by under. It fell while I was away because one week it was there, then the next completely gone. The tree did leave its mark by smashing a fence, putting a kink in a telecom wire and scrapes in the road where the machinery was used to clean it up. Probably 3 years of wood heat all gone too, most likely to the dump. What a shame! Two eagles seemed lost without a place to perch.