Little Acorns

 

“From little acorns, mighty trees doth grow,” the poet said. He meant oak trees; I mean cottonwoods.

Nothing grows quicker, bigger, from a smaller point of origin than my grandchildren, but, still, the poet’s point is well taken.

I saved a cottonwood sapling in my yard alongside the driveway, the same diameter as my little finger, from certain death about thirty years ago. I paused to look at it as I rode up on it sitting on my lawnmower.

It had not been there the week before, seemingly, but now there it was, no more than two-and-a-half feet tall, maybe three, thrusting proudly towards the sky while leaning its length out over the driveway.

I had long wanted a cottonwood in my yard, already choked with oaks, to feed the squirrels leaf buds in May, and attract orioles who like to nest as high as sixty feet above ground. Everybody needs an oriole or two in their yard. Short scrubby oaks won’t bring them.

Here I had one, unexpectedly and overnight as it were. I thought God had forgotten me.

Looking at the sapling, I could tell its future growth, if I saved it, would put it right over the driveway eight, maybe only six or seven feet high above future traffic and pickup camper shells, which even then were an important part of my life. Hmmm. What to do? Can you have your cake, and eat it, too?

Books tell me there are seven different species of cottonwoods in America, two of which, the plains cottonwood and the eastern cottonwood thrive here in Oklahoma, the others finding room stretching all the way from the swamps of Georgia to the Alaskan tundra. I have seen them in both places, surprised at their growth in both places.

How does a species of tree manage to thrive both in a swamp and out on the tundra? Tough tree, that’s how. And arguably gorgeous. A Lauren Bacall tree, maybe.

I studied the moment, climbed off the lawnmower, took out my pocketknife, and snipped the sapling’s growth just below its tilt towards the driveway, and crossed my fingers for the better part of thirty years.

Actually, I knew before the end of the week, so fast cottonwoods grow (like grandkids, remember?), that the operation had been a success. Coming by it the very next lawnmowing, I could tell that the sapling had taken directions well and was headed straight up where lived the bluest of prairie sky. And so it goes, sometimes, with the best laid plans of mice and men.

Like I said, that was thirty-some-odd years ago. If you look closely at the picture accompanying this piece, you will see the spot where I clipped the sapling years ago. The old curve in the trunk is still visible and at about the same height as when I snipped it. Grandson Colt Jordan is pointing in the direction was growing. Grandson Brantley is shoving the giant in the same direction.

No oriole has built a nest yet, but I have seen two of them in the tree’s upper reaches some fifty feet off the ground in the last five years. 2007’s horrible ice storm brought down some of its upper branches, once nearly beaning me while mowing under it, but that’s about it.

Right now, that part of the yard is snow white with the accumulation of this year’s cottonwood seed crop. All of us with allergies out here on The Branch are sneezing ferociously.

The biggest cottonwood I ever saw, save a couple up in Alaska along the Big Susitna River, lived in former times just where the intersection light is now where Charles Page and Highway 97 intersect. Warehouse Market, CVS, and the water plant bracket its old location. I used to drive by that tree twice a day. So did many of you.

The tree was huge, stately, maybe ten feet in diameter; possibly two hundred years old, and here when Washington Irving’s group camped here, maybe under that tree, in 1836. It disappeared in less than a day with the highway widening there. Maybe you noticed it. I did. California has not grown a more regal redwood. Not one.

The plains Indians all considered the cottonwood a sacred tree because of the central role it played in their annual Sun Dance, the function of which was quite similar in intent to the annual religious pilgrimages in England to the shrine of St. Thomas of Becket or the Kaaba at Mecca.

All of the plains tribes that practiced the Sun Dance, and most all of them had a version of it, hand selected a small crew of men to choose one cottonwood perfect for their intentions, chop it down, trim it, and then use horses to drag it to sacred ceremonial ground where it was “replanted” for the coming rites.

It is not stretching it to say that the Sun Dance cottonwood was revered. This would be easily understood in a land where there were practically no trees at all. So, one day riding out on the prairie you see one? One? Just one? How would you then consider it? Attitude is everything.

During the whole time of the Sun Dance, the tree was treated with all the respect a human priest might be under similar circumstances for a similar occasion connected to different religious beliefs. I lost a little fervor for my cottonwood when it tried to bean me as mentioned a moment ago, but I still like it. There’s not a better shade tree in the yard, sneezy cottonwood fluff aside, and the catfish worms we collect under it, glancing up now and then, have sealed its worth.

Then, too, I know one day I will look up into it, hearing a soft, feathery rustle, and see that oriole sneaking surreptitiously in or out of its nest. You know, the one I saw some thirty odd years ago right on this spot.

Copyright © 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen