Our first reader post
...and the one that inspired this column
We have Jim Dale to thank for being the impetus to launch Letters From Iowans in this format. He submitted the essay below as a potential guest column in Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck.
“That does it,” Julie said to her husband, Richard, after reading the delightful piece. “We have to figure out a way to post reader essays in a letter-to-the-editor format for readers of our Iowa Writers’ Collaborative columnists to have published. Not all writers or essays fit the collaborative, but terrific stories can be told from every acre of our 99 counties.
Thanks to you, Jim Dale, for putting us on this course. Richard and I welcome other submissions. lettersfromiowans@gmail.com
Jim Dale is a native Iowa farm boy who went to college and became a United Methodist Minister. Now retired, he lives with his wife, Barbara, in Decorah, Iowa, where on Wednesdays, he rides his E-bike to a place called “The Landing” to participate in a think tank of grey-haired shamen who solve world problems and support the international coffee and cookie industry.
Ode to our oak tree
By Rev. Jim Dale Spring 2023
On the death of a loved one
On Tuesday, the ninth day of May ’23, the executioners came with their chainsaws to euthanize our friend, loving, gentle Annie Oak Tree. It’s not that she has done anything wrong. Quite the opposite, she has done everything right, but they say she is “too old.” She had a couple of health tragedies in the last year, so they think she is….dying….just a matter of time. (Aren’t we all?) That surely is not a crime. And what is time for a tree?
I have spent much time with death in my profession, and I think I know when he has come to call. But it doesn’t appear that Annie has any of the signs. She has no Ash bore scars or Dutch elm disease. She stands tall and straight. It looks to me like her roots run deep. And I can almost hear her xylem and phloem running up and down again after a winter snooze. It’s spring, and small light green leaves start to protrude from her branches. The only sign of death is the pink ribbon target the tree man has tied around her waist. So I remove that. Yes, she is somewhat overgrown, but nothing that some pruning therapy can’t cure. I even offer to pay for that (at less than half the cost of her killing). But cost is not the issue. Our new tree tax covers her death.
On a truck with a sky hook, he rides above the wires and saws her apart, starting at the top. Limb by limb, branch by branch, I watch her drop and cry. I didn’t know her age yet, but it was long. She was perhaps 50 feet high, a story taller than our house. And I know she has been there longer than the sidewalk because she stood in its path, and they had laid it in a semi-circle around her. Her circumference is nearly ten feet.
She shared a root with a second tree who grew beside her, causing a “V” shape that attracted and challenged every child who came by to climb in and stand high and proud. “Look at me, Mama. Take my picture.” Dogs could not resist stopping to make a claim and leaving their messages for the next K9 friend who would pass by. Cars on the street would stop under her shade for drivers to talk on their cell phones or visit the park on the opposite side. She was the Queen of the neighborhood.
We first fell in love with her the day we came to look at the house in 1999. She was one of the reasons that encouraged us to say to the realtor, “Yes, we’ll take it.” For 24 years, she has kept us cool in the summer sun's heat. In the winter, she provided warmth guarding us against the raging north wind. We’ve built snow sculptures beside her, planted flowers, mowed grass, and watched with pleasure as the squirrels scampered up and down her bark carrying the acorns she provided for their private dining. We’ve listened to the birds perched on her arms sing their serenades. We’ve even picked up sticks she rejected and willingly raked tons of leaves.
Problems and pacifism
It was not that Annie had an easy life. She lived through wind and rain, and drought. We saw her pain in the thunder storm derecho in July of 2022. Small insects laid eggs under her bark. Woodpeckers and nuthatches would help her by digging into her bark to remove them. So she would reward them by providing nesting space. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to have a squirrel dig his claws in your skin and scamper up your leg, but it happened, and she allowed it without a winch. But her worst enemy was the electric company. Actually, she was in her space well before there was an electric company, but they seemed to think the space she lived in belonged to them, so they would come and cut branches to make holes in her canopy and string their wires through. And like Jesus of Nazareth, she “never said a mumbling word.” She just took it and peacefully lived on.
Actually, it might have been electricity that finally set her up for execution. On a night in late July in 2022 a big thunderstorm came through Decorah, and in the late evening, after we had all gone to bed in our safe, comfortable home, a tremendous crack awoke us. But it wasn’t until morning that we discovered lightning had struck her and broken a huge section from the top of her central trunk. Like a lightning rod, she had protected our house, and death would be her reward. Some 30-foot log had fallen, bent the rail of our ramp, and jerked out an electric line and connection box to our house. (Take that electric company) Emergency crews and neighbors helped clean up the mess. Then about a month later, her partner to the west, again in the dark of night, fell dead on the sidewalk. This time again, pulling down a neighbor’s electric wire. The tree doctors all came shaking their heads, saying, “Residual disaster and wood rot. The tree must go.” Over my objections, they proclaimed the tree was in the parkway and belongs to the city, not me. The electric company won. From that point on, she was doomed. And she never said a mumbling word.
A history lesson
On the day her western partner fell, a third stump appeared that had been mostly barked over. Were these two tree renewal shoots from a previous tree? We knew she was older than the sidewalk, and the house was over one hundred and ten years old. It was the first house in the neighborhood development. When she was cut to a stump, I counted her one hundred and seventy-nine rings. She was older than the town. Most likely, some squirrel had buried her as an acorn for a winter treat, but Mother Nature had another idea.
“Annie, you were 95 years old when I was born. I have enjoyed your company for the last 25. I never thought I’d outlive you. In fact, I wanted my ashes to be scattered around you when I died so as to feed you to live beyond. I have loved you, Annie oak tree. We will miss you. Especially in the summer when the sun shines hot on our house with the energy you used to absorb in growth while cooling our home. We will miss you in the winter when the north wind blows its cold breath on our front door. We will miss listening to the birds who came to sit on your branches and sing to us. We will miss watching the young squirrels run around your trunk playing catch me if you can. Thank you for sharing your life and gifts with us.”
The inevitability of death
I know all things living do so for only a brief time. Things material have both beginnings and endings. None of us escapes death. One hundred and eighty years is a long and good life even if it could have been longer, even if it is cut short by some other creature of nature, a microorganism, an insect, a disastrous environmental change, a human being with a chain saw. But that does not necessarily justify another organism adding to the destruction of normal life.
Hope depends on healing
Every creature of nature has within itself the gift of healing. And the intention of nature is the cooperation of diversity to balance life before returning to the cycles of the earth. What a powerful gene is the inclination for healing. I remember a large old Locust tree in the front yard of another house where I once lived that got hit by a summer storm. A tornado tore a huge section out of the center of its canopy. Then in the next two years, it lifted its lower branches to fill the hole until you hadn’t seen it soon after the tornado; you would never have known it had been hit. Healing is an incredible, miraculous gift of life. When Annie hit the ground, her stump revealed that I was right and they were wrong. She was not dead, not even near. Though there is no comfort in knowing this when it is too late. Her stump was solid as a rock, still connected to functional roots, with very little rot.
Even after death, hope depends on healing. All the neighbors come by to share our grief. In our front yard remains a scar that the city tells us probably won’t get removed until the fall. The broken sidewalk is marked by two orange cone warnings that every walker must pass by as if in a final “viewing of the remains.”
Memories
When the city comes to rout out Annie’s stump, they will also replace the jog in the sidewalk, making it boringly straight. They will not only have destroyed and removed Annie but they will erase the mark of her memory. No longer will kids climb into her tempting “V,” nor will dogs pause, delaying their masters’ walk in order to signal their friends. Only those of us who knew her will treasure her memory. And even we will soon be gone.
For a brief time, Annie will continue to serve people. Mostly she will be hauled to a cemetery called “Yard waste,” where she might be cut into smaller pieces to be sold to visitors at the campgrounds where she will give heat and light to campfires. Or perhaps she will be chipped to mulch some new young trees. But I’m convinced she will continue to serve even in death. It’s her way.
I look around me in my home and wonder about the life of the anonymous trees that are still serving me, my hardwood oak and pine floors, my maple and walnut cabinets, a hickory rocking chair, and a cherry table, all sitting on a 30 foot long 6x6 beam that runs the length of the house in the basement under the first floor. And outside, I’m protected with cedar siding. It must have taken a forest to build my house. And most of us love Decorah because we love the beauty and comfort of our Trees.
The meaning of life
So, in the end, what does all this mean? Probably not much. Nature is still in charge and in the end, will win. If climate and environment change, nature will have the final say as she did with the dinosaurs. But if the earth is getting more unbalanced, it is not because trees have overpopulated. If any creatures have insensitively unbalanced it, it’s clearly human beings.
Perhaps it is only a quirk of creatures, self-called “human beings,” to want to find meaning in everything. The philosopher Koheleth says, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 1:1) All things come. All things go. The sun rises. The sun goes down then hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north. Round and round goes the wind, and on its circuit, the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. All things change. The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them. Some creatures harm others. Some creatures do good to others. Some harm turns out to be good. Some good things turn out to be harmful. Some bask in undeserved comfort and luxury. Some suffer in underserved excruciating pain. Life goes on. Nothing lasts. All things pass away. Is there rhyme or reason or Justice? Is there anything but the moment?
Perhaps the best we can do is to live in harmony with all of nature, doing as little harm as possible but recognizing the balance of all things, respecting the give and take of that balance, and seeking to find as much joy and satisfaction as possible and willingly giving back to the future what we have been given when our brief moment in history is over. So may it be.
But wait! There it is, right here in our no-mow May front yard, a small oak tree shoot. Annie has done it again. She has collaborated with a squirrel to give us hope for the future.
Jim Dale took part in a Des Moines Register Storytelling program. Click to view: Jim Dale
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Welcome, Jim. Sad to say goodbye to Annie Oak Tree.
Jim: A great tribute to Annie, a good oak! Reminded me a bit of Aldo Leopold's "Good Oak."
Also enjoyed Harry's Last Ride.
See you in Decorah?
Larry