My granddaughter has been working on a nature patch with her Girl Scout troop. One requirement is to identify five trees by their bark.
By their leaves, I might have had a chance, but by their bark? I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t been much help.
You’d think I’d be better at it, given the number of trees that have stood faithfully in my back yard lo these many years, but I’ve approached them more like trusted coworkers that I count on to be there but would struggle to recall their names if I ran into them at the mall. I should do better.
I like trees. They produce oxygen for us to breathe, peaches for cobbler, pecans for pie and syrup to go on our pancakes. And that’s just while they’re standing. At the end of their earthly existence, they help produce homes and cozy firesides and paper for almost everything. Who among us is consistently that productive?
OK, occasionally, trees do fall on our houses, but that’s hardly the trees’ fault. Blame those lapses on overzealous winds or an unreasonable amount of rain.
If I seem to be waxing a bit poetic, it’s because the Girl Scout project happened to coincide with my reading of a book called “Braiding Sweetgrass.” It’s taking me a while to read, but not because I’m having trouble deciphering the words. No, I only read a paragraph or two at a time because each page contains something beautiful that needs to be savored. The author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, is a Native American botanist, a professor who knows the Latin names for all of her plant friends but is working on learning their “songs.” She suggests that we would do well to show more respect for plants because they “were here first on the earth and have had a long time to figure things out.”
Don’t you just love that? I mean, how could you hurry past that?
Being guilty of zooming past just about everything, I am trying to slow down and learn to better appreciate my deciduous and coniferous roommates. (Look at me throwing around plant words!) So far, I’ve really only been acquainted with what falls out of the trees. The oaks produce acorns that pelt my deck like grenades. The hickories have bigger fruits that are a puzzle even for the squirrels. The sweet gums drop ingenious little multi-pocketed seed pods that my childhood Girl Scout troop used to fill with toothpicks and spray paint gold.
And the leaves … so many leaves! This fall will bring days and days of raking. At that point, I won’t stop to notice whether the leaves are pointy or rounded or saw-toothed or smooth.
Somehow, I never noticed the trunks at all, and they’ve been right at my eye level, for heaven sakes. Maybe it’s because trunks aren’t flashy. Bark is gray or brown and seems like a backdrop for the colorful bits above. But, apparently, the trunk isn’t just there to hold up the leaves. It serves as a highway for nutrients and grows ring after ring of meaty substance so the rest of the tree can branch out and be its more spectacular self.
Maybe it doesn’t matter if I can tell one tree’s bark from another, but now, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t at least try. And I’ll have all winter to do it. The leaves will … well, leave … but the trunks will remain. They will be quietly prepping for the spring ahead while getting thicker around the middle.
I hear ya, sister. I hear ya.
