Chapter 46

Give Me A Bur Oak

Alexander Murphy stooped to pick up an acorn, its mossy cup thick with fringe all around, the nut smooth and brown, small this year. He turned the acorn over in his hand, admiring its hula-like skirt, evolved as if to give the seed a base to stand on after it fell, and then, come spring, to drive a taproot deep into the oak-leaf enriched Iowa soil.

The bur oak acorn's furry fringe felt wet, soaked with rain that fell earlier in the day, the first in much too long in northeast Iowa -- a drought-breaker perhaps too late in coming for the corn and beans, anyhow. The fibers protected the nut, kept it moist, increased its very long odds to grow into a massive tree like the one he knelt beneath.

It was raining when the family got up that day. It felt good to smell the sweetened air dense with moisture, clean of dust. After breakfast, he kissed Grandma Teresa on the cheek, rested his hand on his father's once-powerful shoulder, and called for Michael and Rose. Instead of waiting for the school bus in the rain at the end of the driveway, the two gladly jumped into the Ford pickup for the trip to school.

With almost minimal argument over radio stations, the pair settled on KIOA and Puff Daddy's "Shake Ya Tailfeather," while Alexander shook his head and tried to imagine the radio button wars in his day. He recalled that Owen was not so free with delegating the mobile musical selection as he was. Soon after, the kids climbed out near the front walk of Ding Darling Elementary. He thought he'd seen Laura enter the building just as they pulled in, but he wasn't sure. Dang. This being a single dad was getting old. Resisting the impulse to follow them inside, he called a fond good-bye instead, and swung the pickup east.

From his highland overlook,on the wooded forty Delbert had inherited from his mother, Alexander looked down on corn battalions arrayed below. The Cedar River wound along the timber bottomland yonder. He felt a welcome memory. His wife Peggy was dead, yet she seemed to be right there. He'd missed her these four years; the whole family missed her, especially Rosie. Peggy used to come here with him on this scouting trip to the deer stand. Once, they'd gotten into an acorn fight and threw nuts at each other. She'd started it. He smiled. Then he grimaced, recalling that he had shushed her laughter then, and stifled their play at the thought of spooking any deer nearby. Alexander sighed.

He put the acorn into his pocket, and stepped over to the place where one of the bur oak's wide branches dipped a little toward the ground. He stretched upward on his toes, as he did each year, to just touch the swooping limb. The Quercus macrocarpa was nearly as wide as it was tall, squat and burley at the trunk with limbs too thick to get an arm around from the ground, at least for a guy in his forties. Facing away from the tree, Alexander crouched and jumped. He felt the tough bark bite his wrists as he gripped the limb and swung his legs back, then forward and up to wrap the horizontal branch from below in a four-legged sloth-like embrace . Alexander hitched his right boot against a smaller lateral branch and, with that leverage, pried his body around to the top of the big limb, now facing the tree.

He shinned along the limb until he could stand, and then stepped to the big trunk and leaned back into the dry side of the tree. He wondered how many more years he would be able to do that trick, recalling the time he'd been disgusted to find two-by-four steps spiked to the trunk and had torn them off. He supposed he'd need a ladder or a portable blind at some point, but he liked remembering the first time his dad had boosted him up at age 14 to grab this same limb, and then handed him the unloaded shotgun up from below. He didn't get a deer that day, but he saw a big buck flag its tail at him as it bounded into the sumac below.

From that day to this one, he knew just where to look, how the stealthy bucks would approach depending on whether drivers followed them or not. The smooth-lobed bur oak leaves obscured his view today, yet they'd all be gone by December when shotgun season opened. He remember vowing last year to take up bow hunting. Freezing feet and hands in the cold winds that blew up here was not much fun, even for fresh venison. Maybe the kids would be interested, too. Would Laura kill a deer with a bow? Perhaps. Weren't there Buddhist archers? Hindus? He'd ask.

Alexander turned into the solid bur oak's main stem. He climbed higher to another branch. At age 16 he had sat for a long time carving his initials and Peggy's with a heart and an arrow. Only faint echoes of this jackknife work remained, now healed over and completely covering the cambium wound. He looked then through the bur oak canopy east where blue sky and sun now flecked the oak green with gold. A sweet west breeze swept over him.

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Next... Chapter 47.

Thanks for these resources:

Running Pure: Protecting forests can provide cities with cleaner, cheaper water, Report by World Wildlife Fund/World Bank

Oaks of North America, Howard Miller and Samuel Lamb, Naturegraph Publishers, Inc., 1985

Silvics of North America; USDA Forest Service Agriculture Handbook 654
* Bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa)

Illinois Division of Forest Resources; Illinois Department of Natural Resources
Iowa Bureau of Forestry; Iowa Department of Natural Resources
Minnesota Division of Forestry; Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Missouri Forestry Section; Missouri Department of Conservation
Wisconsin Division of Forestry; Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
USDA Forest Service; United States Department of Agriculture

Iowa Geological Survey, Iowa Department of Natural Resources

International Society of Arboriculture

U.S. Forest Service National Tree Climbing Program

New Tribe Tree Climbing Equipment, also makers of the Weed Wrench™ woody plant puller

Fresco Arborist Supply

The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 46 was written and edited by John Gabbert.

Upper Mississippi Basin Stakeholder Network and The Upper Basin Chronicles © 2003 Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.Your comments are invaluable. Please email feedback to (mailto link) The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 46.

The characters presented here are purely fictional, and neither bear resemblance to persons living or dead, nor represent the views or opinions of Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.