A Day at the University of Oregon in Eugene

When God created the world in six days, looked at it and said that it was very good, God must have been thinking about Eugene, OR early in September. Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656), who published a chronology that purported to time and date creation, concluded that the world was created on the night preceding October 23, 4004 BC. I think he was off by about seven weeks--September 6, 4004 BC--and Eugene, OR was the place where the world was born. Well, today I went to Eugene for the day to see my son, a student at the U of O. School doesn't begin for 2 1/2 weeks, and so a genial air of relaxation and pleasure prevailed around campus today (except for the construction folk, who are desperately trying to get things done before school begins).

We ate lunch together and took a tree walk around Johnson Hall, the Administration building. When we take such a walk, he holds the book University of Oregon Atlas of Trees open to the appropriate map, and then guides me to tree after tree. I try to identify each tree, preferably with the Latin abbreviations. I was doing pretty well today, I thought, until we came to a tree to the SW of Johnson Hall. I told my son it looked like a Tilia (a Linden), but that the serrated leaf, which looked a little like a red maple leaf, confused me. I scratched my head, wracked my brain and said, "I don't know." My son calmly said, "Yep, it is a Tilia, but this one's a Mongolian Linden." To which I responded like Maxwell Smart, Secret agent 86, "That's the second time I fell for that one this month!"

Getting My Bearings

But I also went to Eugene to examine the trees on my own. There are 108 tree maps for the U of O campus. Some of the maps have zero or very few trees--for example, the practice soccer field not unexpectedly has few Douglas-firs or Giant Sequoias at midfield, while others of the maps have in excess of 50 trees. The U of O number of trees far exceeds the trees of Reed College, which has a manageable 33 maps. But in the three days I have walked the U of O campus (about 6 hours each time), I have managed to work through more than 40 of the maps; each time I learn so much that I feel that my body and mind are fully sated by the end of the day. When I drive back to Salem, with the brilliant hues of pink and purple in the Western sky, I feel as if I am the most fortunate person in the world. I spend the day outside, learning, examining a class of the (usually ignored) beauties of nature, and getting exercise at the same time.

I confirmed for myself today that studying trees is both a controversial and social activity. It is controversial because almost every time I do it, someone with a worried look comes up to me and asks what I am doing. Today it was someone working with a construction crew near the music building. The guy had the temerity to be wearing an Oregon State University orange shirt on the U of O campus; I probably should have ignored him when he asked what I was up to and told him that his health was in jeopardy. But I engaged him in talk, and when he determined that I wasn't a threat to national security, he got back to work.

Yet, examining trees is also a most social activity. People will stop when I am struggling with a map and ask me if I need help or directions to someplace. Invariably I tell the person that I am looking at the university's trees, and almost invariably the person seems politely interested. I ask them if they are knowledgeable about trees (almost no one is); whether they know any of the trees around them (one woman, the director of the child care center at U of O, told me she knew the two incense cedars which towered over her children's outdoor play yard); whether they have seen the Atlas of Trees that I was carrying with me. Usually when I engage with a person who stops to ask me something, I make sure that I tell them something about at least one tree. For example, to the director who pointed proudly to the incense cedars, I also added some information about the interesting Prunus lusitanica (Portuguese Laurel Cherry) which is growing in the kids' sandbox.

I haven't yet gotten a date out of conversations about trees, but I have had great conversations with many neighbors and people along the way. I don't believe that anyone whom I have complimented about their trees has been anything other than very friendly to me. It is almost as if I am commending them for their child (or dog).

Highlights of the Day

Well, today was a very full day, and I hope to write about it at length in a few days. But here were a few of my "discoveries" on the U of O campus today, discoveries that delighted me and challenged me at the same time. I became re-acquainted with loads of trees at the beginning, going back to the Western White Pines and Paper Mulberries and the Tree of Heaven that are in the SW part of the campus. I couldn't help pausing at the Caucasian Wingnut again. It must have the most unusual name of any tree--but it is so called because the hanging catkins, usually more than 1 foot in length, are surrounded by a whitish-green paper wing. It is called "Caucasian" not because of some kind of racial theory but because the tree is native to the Caucasus Mountains in the Middle East.

But I couldn't stop with just looking at these trees; I pushed on to the Education building and then to the East, where in an alcove of the Knight Library (with Phil Knight's latest gift of $100 million to the "Oregon Athletics Legacy Fund" there probably will be few buildings on campus in the future without the Knight name on it), I found about 9 Golden Chain trees. This is ironic because just yesterday I was frustrated by not knowing what one looked like--I emailed the City of Salem forester to find a few addresses in Salem where there was such a tree and I looked at one exemplar in Salem yesterday, but today I was overwhelmed by them all.

There was so much more. When you take tree walks you end up traveling less-travelled paths, to use a "Robert Frost-ism," and so I not only discovered where the windows to the Knight Library are very filthy, but I went behind the Gerlinger annex to discover the campus' only China Fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata). The only other tree in Map 73 was also one with which I wasn't familiar--the Sawtooth Oak (Quercus acutissima). By the end of the day, however, I had run into about a dozen of the latter, mostly in parking lots on the Eastern end of campus, and I felt I knew the tree well. Indeed, my son and I both learned our lessons today when we saw another tree with identical leaves to the Sawtooth Oak (I took one from the first tree and put it in my pocket), and thus we concluded that it, too, must be a Sawtooth Oak. But it wasn't--it was a Castanea sativa (European chestnut), though without any chestnuts on it (Map 45).

Conclusion

Every time I go out to study trees, I feel I learn something not only about them but about life. Though sometimes the acquisition of knowledge seems painfully slow ("oh, yes--I said after looking up the tree--now I understand for the fifth time why it is a hackberry!"), I think I have more knowledge than even a few days ago. And, as I suggested, by studying trees, you begin to see places from angles you never knew existed. I can hardly wait to get back to do the other 60 maps...

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