~a column by Colleen O’Brien
They’re going to cut down my favorite tree.
“They” means “Authority.”
This particular Authority is why I question authority: authority tries to do good, but they’re just not good at it. They get a little power, or a lot, and if they say something will be, or will not be, it’s carved in stone. Once an authority, always an authority; one is proud to be so, and pride tends to make one stick with unwise, unthoughtful decisions. It’s often hard for Authority to back down and reverse a decision, fearing it makes them look weak. If they only knew, it more often makes them look smart.
The tree they plan to cut down is a Florida Live Oak, a neighbor of mine. The “live” means he is not deciduous; deciduous when it comes to trees means shedding leaves at certain seasons. “Live” in this sense means the oaks shed leaves all year long even as they grow leaves all year long. These are busy trees – shedding, growing, dropping acorns, losing twigs and often big branches that break in a storm. Oaks are one of the hardiest of trees because they can repair themselves, fix their own wounds, and through their roots feed other plants. They like to live long lives – Florida Live Oaks prefer around 600 years; English Oaks, about a thousand.
My live oak may be about 50 or 60 years old. I have a call into the City Arborist for information about how to tell a tree’s age without cutting it down to count the rings in its trunk, but I have yet to hear.
In the decade I’ve lived near my live oak, I’ve never given the fellow a name other than “my friend.” I find this a mistake on my part because I talked to him quite a bit – as I walked past him, washed dishes at my kitchen window, drove into my driveway. I hope this bodes no ill, a beloved tree unnamed. How can I write this eulogy without a name to pin it to? I guess I just capitalize “Friend,” which I never did in my head when I said hi or on paper when I wrote notes. Any living thing with a death sentence needs a name, so Capital Friend it is.
I did not live in this ‘hood when he lost half himself in 2004’s Hurricane Charley, but I knew him. The ravaged portion left a gash a foot long with a deep hole about five feet up the trunk. When I first became real friends with him, around 2011, I examined the wound, which looked mended; it had grown over quite a bit, his bark rounded at the edges of the gap as neat as ribbing on a pillow. The hole is now only about eight inches long and is full of notes and flowers and poems.
If I can save you, Capital Friend, I will, but as I said in the beginning, you’re in the clutches of Authority now, and woe to living things that wind up there, even if it’s low-level authority. A little of it goes a long way, you’ll notice, and they’ll give you dirty looks, and wipe their hands on their pants if they touch you, and mention to the public quiet misstatements and hazardous (to you) untruths about the doomed fate of tree trunks with gashes. People believe them, and before you know it, you’re cut off at the roots, sawed into rounds and piled along the curb for strangers to pick up and burn in their fireplaces.
Your absence will be glaring – there will be too much sun, no wafting and waving of handsome branches, no squirrels using you as their playground, no shade to sit under, no artful shadows filtering into the living room windows of the house across the street from you. You will leave a bare spot, a death spot.
Eventually a new tree will replace you, but it never will be as grand as you because Authority has decided Florida Live Oak is unsuitable to your spot – too big, too busy, rambling roots, constant shedding of leaves, way too close to an electrical box, which, by the way, could be easily shortened to avoid ever being touched by a branch of the mature, healthy gracefulness that calms everyone who looks at you.
There is nothing like an oak, you know, for majesty, for beauty. And you were just approaching your prime, a youth with a long life ahead of you when you first faced off hundred-mile-per-hour winds. To lose a limb is one thing; to lose a life because you are no longer symmetrical and someone says you have a diseased hole in you…well, there have always been folks who are afraid of any perception of cripple.
Your remaining self is deep-green-leaved, and you stand with the dignity of a survivor as you arch over the fountain (some dislike the leaves you leave there, but good grief, you’re a TREE, which is your nature). You sported a perfect canopy until Charley hit. You lost an arm to that hurricane, and eighteen years later, you’re still here. Doesn’t that prove something about your stamina and will to live? Then you faced Ian, labeled one of the deadliest storms to hit Florida ever. He merely disheveled you, blew away a few branches as if pruning you to a stature that is unique – you have a look of purposeful art in your almost two decades worth of altered trunk and branches. You are one of a kind, approaching the unusualness of the grandfather oaks in old Sarasota whose branches arc up and up and curve down and up again. They are magnificent. Their strength awes, they are noble and stately – this is your heritage if you are given a stay of execution. You will be admired over the decades for preserving yourself, a worthy warrior.
I do not know if my pleas for your life amid the facts of the longevity of your species will do any good; we face a predisposed bureaucracy.
Keep the faith, Capital Friend. I’ll do what I can to save you.
Your neighbor, Colleen.
