A Mighty Oak

I’ve been standing in this exact same spot for over four hundred years. I am a mighty oak. I provide shade in the summer, food for animals in the autumn, oxygen for people and animals everywhere. I have stood sentinel before there were roads, before there were cities and towns, before there were buildings, before there was anything except the forest. 

I was once part of a vast, never-ending woodland. As far as the eye could see, there were trees. Not just oaks, but ash, birch, hickory and walnut trees. Evergreens grew along the edges of meadows. Animals have always lived in my forest. In fact it was a small grey squirrel that planted the tiny acorn I grew from. I have been home to many different animals and birds. Songbirds, crows, and ravens have made their homes in my branches. Opossums have burrowed at my roots, as have skunks and chipmunks. Black bears have rubbed their backs against my bark. Lynx and cougars have climbed my lower branches, waiting for their prey to happen by. 

The first humans that ever laid eyes on me were the original peoples of this land. They caused no harm, foraging for food from the forest, including my acorns that fell to the ground in autumn. Some trees were harvested for housing, but never too many, and never from the same area. Deadwood was used for heat and cooking.

Where I stand was part of an important route that lead to the waterways and lakes that that provided travel routes, first for the Haudenosaunee people, then the French coureur de bois, who used this route as part of their fur trade trade routes that criss-crossed this country. Many times a camp was struck at my base, providing a peaceful respite during the long trek to the water. I provided travellers a place to relax before returning to the journey at hand. Many a man spent an evening leaning against my strong, straight trunk. 

I have seen men singing. I have heard men talking and making plans. I have seen men fighting. I once had a man die pinned to my trunk by an arrow; another died slumped at my base after being shot in the heart. 

All of my visitors had been itinerant, staying just a night or two before moving on with their journey. Then, a man and a woman arrived in my forest. Together they felled the trees around me to build their house. Then they felled more trees to clear the way for crops and pastures. They left me standing as I was large, and provided much shade in the summer that helped to cool their home. In the winter I provided a bulwark from the frigid winter winds. 

The family grew from the man and the woman to include children. There were ten children in all, but only three survived. When their first child died, a baby girl, the woman, crying, carried her out of the house and buried her at my base. She is now part of me. 

It was a hard life for the people living in the forest, but the family stayed. The children and I both grew taller. My branches were used, for the first time, by children. They would climb me, daring each other to go higher and higher. They would make plans and tell stories while sitting on my sturdy boughs. They would hide away, hoping no one would find them. As the children grew older, they stopped climbing to the top of my crown. There were only birds and squirrels flitting from branch to branch, making their homes, but I missed the children and the joy they brought.

I was used as a weeping place when the woman died, and the man was left alone. He came to me to release his sorrow, away from the eyes of his children, to be alone. The oldest boy held his girl’s hands and chastely kissed her cheek for the first time under my branches. He later asked her to marry him one spring when my leaves were unfurling, verdant green. They married, and moved into the house, and raised their own children here, in the shade of my branches.

All around me, though, things were changing. Where once there was one family alone in the forest, more and more people settled and built their homes, and cleared their fields. I watched as all the trees around me were felled, and the forest slowly disappeared. Within the lifetime of the son and his wife, five new homesteads could be seen from the crown of my branches. With the new people on the land, fewer of the wild animals roamed. I no longer had cougars or lynx lounging in my branches, nor skunks nor opossums burrowing under my roots. Instead I had horses hitched to my trunk, and chickens pecking at the earth beneath my branches. 

The house built in the shade of my limbs was passed from generation to generation. One cold winter’s night there was a fire. Flames engulfed the home, singeing my branches closest to the conflagration. I was spared, but there was nothing to be done, the home was lost. The man — the great grandson of the original owner — his wife and children huddled at my base, weeping over their loss. They vowed to rebuild. 

It took a long time to build, but the new home was grand. My singed branches grew back as the house was constructed. It was painted white, with two storeys, and a porch that wrapped around the front. Because my branches had spread so wide, the house was built a little farther away. A wagon track was build around me, making me the first thing a person would see when traveling up the path to the house. I became the mighty oak that such an important house deserved.

Change was happening all over. On the public land in front of my land, where there once was a single wagon track, a formal road was built. Where there had been occasional wagons or horses passing before, but now there was a constant stream of people. From the top reaches of my branches, more changes could be seen. Many of the original homesteads that had first been cleared were gone. Where there had been a few houses surrounded by fields, there were now more houses, with no fields, no cattle, no crops. My forest had become a town. Gone was the dense quiet of the woodlands, replaced with the sounds of civilization. A train now travelled through the town, spewing black soot that covered my leaves. Over and over, people spoke of progress, but I missed peacefulness of the forest.

I had always shaded and protected the many different families who lived in the house. Children were always clamouring, setting out to conquer my height and breadth. I had swings and ropes tied to my limbs for children to play on. At one point I had a treehouse built in my branches. I was a place of sanctuary for the children. I was part of their lives. I shared their joys and sorrows, their victories and defeats. I watched them grow and leave to pursue lives of their own. I watched their parents grow old and die, only to have a new family choose my house to live in. 

I was tall and strong. Until I wasn’t. 

A vicious summer storm was brewing in the west. The slate coloured clouds hung low, scuttling across the sky. Thunder rolled across lands, moisture hung in the air. Then lightening bolted from the clouds, rain pounded the earth. Winds whipped up, tossing my branches, ripping the leaves from my limbs. A sudden blinding flash of lightening slashed down from the sky, striking me, blackening a scar the length of my trunk. The smell of burn wood and ozone permeated the air. I feared that this would be the end of my reign. I was indelibly marked, an example of the power of nature. But I survived. I am a mighty oak. Lightening cannot fell me.

My house was a proud house. The people were good, honest people. Who, but the best of people could live in the shadow of such a mighty oak? I believed that until the autumn night when a number of men on horses galloped up to the front of the house. They were carrying torches and guns. They kicked in the front door, and entered the house. A few minutes later, they dragged the man out of the door, kicking and fighting. The woman, in her bed clothes, stood on the porch, screaming at the men dragging her husband away, begging them to let him go. 

The men threw a rope over the sturdiest of my lower branches. They had put the man on a horse, hands tied behind his back. a noose around his neck. The woman ran towards the group, pleading with the men to stop, but they slapped the horse away, and the man fell, suspended above the ground, noose tight around his neck. The woman grabbed her husband’s feet, and tried to hold him up. The group just rode away, leaving the woman alone in the dark, trying to save her husband’s life. 

She struggled beneath her husband’s body, bearing his weight, crying for help. But there was no one to help her. Finally she fell to the ground, exhausted. Her husband was dead.

She fled the house, never to return. We were abandoned for three winters, the rope left to rot on my limb. Finally a new owner bought property. But my fine house was no longer a family home, but a new business — a mortuary — a place to serve the dead and those who mourned them. No more children running in the yard. Instead, my house became a place of sorrow. The new owners placed a bench under my branches, in the shade. It became a place of introspection and tears. I was there to provide heartbroken people the solitude they required.

Things were changing rapidly in this new world. A modern invention caused me pause — the car. It was a boon for people. It allowed them to travel quickly and efficiently from place to place. But it caused changes to my being. It made the air always dirty, covering me from my crown to my roots with dirty sooty, particles. My leaves were now covered with a dirty layer that had never existed before. Sure, there had been cinders from trains, but there was only one train a day. Now there were hundreds of cars every day, each sending fuel residue into the air. I was changed. Photosynthesis was harder with such heavy air and the film on my leaves. The constant assault to the atmosphere weakened me. I had to pull harder to nourish my leaves, branches and roots. But I prevailed. 

Over the years, my existence was, at times, precarious. Modernization was a constant assault on my continuance. Water mains, sewers pipes, electrical lines had each almost resulted in my demise many times over. Trenches were dug. Lines were strung. But my owners always championed my existence. “No, no, you can’t dig there — we have to protect the tree” was their constant mantra. 

The road was widened, and came closer to my roots. Then it was to be widened again, to make way for six lanes of traffic. It was to be my death knell. My roots were in the way of progress. I had to go. The city was prepared to sacrifice me in the name of improved traffic patterns. They promised to craft me into wooden benches that would be placed around the town, to honour my long and lustrous life. They said that there was nothing they could do, they had to build the road. They were going to have to cut me down. Until they weren’t.

My neighbourhood came together. There were petitions, and studies. People lamented the loss of my canopy cover, the loss of habitat for the birds and animals who lived among my branches. The city’s Urban Forestry Department deemed me very old, but very healthy. Arborists declared I was the oldest tree for miles and miles, a national treasure that should be preserved at all costs. People protested. But the city refused to change its plans. Then, late one night, a group of people climbed my branches, going as high as they could, and built a platform — another treehouse. They were going to “occupy” me until the city changed their plans. Other people chained themselves together around my trunk. 

Television and news outlets arrived, and told my story. They interviewed historians who hypothesized that I may have been alive before Europeans had arrived in this part of the continent. They stood beside my trunk, running their hands down my scar, explaining how I had survived a major lightening strike. They whispered about how I was the tree that the man had been hanged from, his murderers never found. Pictures of me were found and shared online and in the news — photos that dated from the very beginnings of photography. Paintings and sketches that predated even photography were found that showed me standing tall and proud. But the city still refused to relent. New plans for the road were offered, and summarily rejected by the city. The future looked grim. It wasn’t until the building across the street became available that the city purchased it and changed the plans for the road. I was saved.

The very fine house was purchased, and transformed into a museum, where many of my photos and drawing were displayed. The land around me was converted into a park. Once again, children scaled my branches, and swung from tires and swings attached to my limbs. Yellow ribbons were tied around me, welcoming soldiers home from war. Christmas lights were wrapped around my trunk and strung from my lowest branches. 

Today, I still hold vigil over the land, the last vestige from my long ago forest.