Tree Stories II

By slowing down and listening to trees, you begin to develop a new community of people. Let me illustrate. A few Sundays ago I was talking to a man after church whom I thought I knew well. He asked what I was doing in life now. Rather than trying to try to impress him by using words like "consultant" or "seminar leader" (I don't have the need to do that anymore), I told him that I was spending a lot of time learning names of trees. I told him that I was taking tree tours, visiting arboretums, etc. He then told me that the focus of his working life, where he was a very successful businessman, had to do with trees. I didn't know that. What did he do? Well, he developed a business in which his people gathered pollen from certain trees and then sold it to pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for people who suffered from allergies. All of a sudden, he was not simply a person with whom I talked easily; we now had trees in common.

Or, a few days later, I was out walking around my home town looking at trees on the Willamette University campus. I was admiring some paper birches by the mill stream on campus. I mentioned to an undergraduate sitting nearby that those were paper birches. He couldn't have been less interested. But then, a middle-aged man passed by, and we struck up a conversation. He wondered about some flowers nearby which we both couldn't identify. Then, our conversation went from flowers, to trees, to photography (his profession), to law (one of my professions), to Oregon history (both of our loves) and to the fact that his great-great-great grandfather, Nathan Kimball, was killed in the Whitman massacre of 1847 near Walla Walla, WA.

With some emotion, he told me the story of how the Kimball's had left Vermont in that year for the promised land of Oregon, had joined the wagon train in Independence, MO and headed West. They lost one son from disease in NE, and another son was lost in the Snake River in Idaho. Thus, two sons short, they pulled into Waiilatpu in the early Fall. The 1847 travelling party then split into three groups, with one pushing on to Oregon through the Barlow trail; one went down the Columbia River; and one group decided to stay at the Whitman Mission. The Kimballs, short two children, were in the last group. Well, Nathan happened to be in the wrong place at the very worst time, and was hacked to death.

So, all of a sudden, on the Willamette campus on a pleasant early August day, I found myself transported back 160 years with my new acquaintance. I shared my Whitman essays with him; he told me some more things about his family. I was touched. As was he. And this would never have happened had we not first stopped because of the trees.

One More Story

Well, one more story will have to suffice. When I was doing some more tree-watching, an older woman was shuffling past me. She was using a walker, though she was only about 65 years old. As I later learned, she was recovering from some injuries. But as she passed by, I couldn't help asking her: "Have you ever seen such big leaves on a tree?"--pointing to the nearby Black Oak. She stopped and looked up, and we began to talk. It happened that she loved trees, and had to deal with a practical "tree-issue" on her property. Apparently, the water table in Salem near the Mill Creek is rising because of upstream development. Well, two of her Oregon White Oaks (Quercus garryana) fell last Winter. They were 200-300 years old and provided shade and delight to the neighborhood. The water table's rising had apparently weakened the roots. So, we talked trees, and the politics of trees, and all of a sudden she was inviting me to meetings and trying to sign me up for "the cause." Stay tuned.

Conclusion--Meeting Buck

I guess I will get to my tree tours next essay, because I want to close this by telling you one more story...about a tree. I met Buck a few weeks ago at the Deepwood Estate in Salem, where he works on the grounds and is in the process of planting a native Oregon garden on the grounds. I told him I might be willing to help out--but in a very specific way, which I will talk about in a later essay. We talked about plants and trees for a while. He is a professional, so he knows all the "lingo," and I struggled to "keep up" with Buck. But he was patient with me. Well, just before I came down to CA, I met Buck again at the Deepwood. He said he had something for me. I followed Buck into the greenhouse, and he gave me a tree. It was a "cultivar." The original stem (I won't have all the right words) was from a Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), but then he spliced onto it a particular "brand" of Japanese maple. He gave me this maple, telling me that within several years, it would grow and give the most beautiful white flowers in the Spring.

All of a sudden I realized that I would have to find a place for this Japanese maple at home. So, with a friend, I cleared away some weeds from the back fence of my yard, and we had a short "ceremony" planting the tree. It was, in fact, one of the first things I had planted in my life. As I went to bed that night, I thought of how the world of trees had already paid me back much more than I had invested in it.

But it also pays you back by teaching you about specific trees. The next essay turns to some walks I took in Palo Alto.

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