An Elegy
By Mary Batten
If only it had actually died, we wouldn’t have killed it. We didn’t want to, but the old oak tree that had stood in the backyard of my grandparents’ farm in Isle of Wight County, Virginia for at least two centuries had become dangerous to human life and limbs.
My brother and I rubbed our hands against its ancient rough bark, stroking it as if it were the coat of an animal, touch triggering memories stretching back beyond our childhood, beyond our mother’s and grandparents’ childhoods. So much history embedded in its cellulose molecules. The tree enriched our lives. If not blood kin, sap kin. Humans share with trees, and other plants, the same four chemical building blocks that make up our DNA—our genetic legacy of life on Earth.
The tree was still alive when we called the tree people to take it down. Somehow, I felt the tree knew what was about to happen. I wondered what it would feel and say if it could talk. I know I can never speak for a tree, but I have tried to imagine its last thoughts.
I never meant any harm, but after standing for almost two centuries, I began losing control of my limbs. At first, small branches started falling off. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop it. Then a section of my crown died, no leaves, just bare winter gray branches. Part of my body was dying while the rest of me was leafy and luxuriant. During storms when the winds grew stronger, larger branches fell. Still it was no great concern. A Southern red oak of my size and age has numerous branches it can afford to lose. My trunk was strong and my great limbs stretched more than 30 feet from side to side like gigantic leafy wings. Fortunately, the branches that fell didn’t hit anything or do any damage, but I could tell my human caretakers were changing their attitude toward me. The brother who normally parks his truck in my shade, moved it to an open area.
Finally, one night, I suffered a calamity. An enormous limb with a girth as large as the trunks of many other kinds of trees, just popped out of its trunk socket and thundered to the ground. For a human, it would be like having an arm fall out of its shoulder socket. The ground shook beneath me, as if there had been an earthquake. There was no warning, no symptoms and no wind, nor had any animals been gnawing on that limb. It just happened, leaving me without one of my major limbs. I shuddered from my crown to my roots, knowing I was severely wounded. Thankfully, it happened at night and none of the people who live on the property were about. My limb didn’t hit the barn or the garage. If trees could weep, I would have screamed and cried for my missing limb. I wondered if I would feel phantom pain like human amputees do.
In the morning, the people who live in the farmhouse closest to me came out to inspect, for they had heard the noise and felt the impact of my fallen limb the night before.
“Oh, my god,” the woman said. She is the third generation of the family that has owned this property for more than a century. Her grandfather tied his mules around my trunk to give them water and rest after a morning plowing in the peanut fields. On summer Sundays, after the family got home from church, her grandmother sat under my shade and turned the handle of the old wooden ice-cream maker, producing creamy peach or pineapple or banana ice cream. When she was a child, the woman played in my shade like her mother before her, collecting my acorns and holding pretend tea parties with her dolls under my leafy arms. I was a comfort to my human family and a home and food source to numerous squirrels, birds and insects that climbed, crawled and skittered among my branches. Most recently a group of five hawks gathered in my topmost branches every morning as if holding a convocation.
I have been part of this landscape since I was born – well, not born in the human sense – trees aren’t born; we sprout from seeds. I sprouted from an acorn that somehow escaped a squirrel’s gut and fell to the moist earth. Beneath the decomposing leaf litter, nutrients nourished my acorn, enabling me to push through its hard shell, rise through the leaf litter and grow toward the sun. My fresh green baby leaves appeared and my spindly baby trunk stood strong. Among all the oak seedlings eaten by predators or crushed by heavy, booted human feet, I was somehow spared to survive and mature. I was part of the original forest when the first white Southerners began clearing the land and planting crops. There were black Southerners, too, though they were not treated equally with the whites. Even a tree like me could tell there was a difference.
Although people cut down other trees around me, they left me standing tall and proud. I think they loved me, and successive generations of the farm family loved me and left me shading their backyard.
But now, the humans are afraid. The woman’s brother comes to look at my fallen limb. He, too, played beneath my branches as a little boy. Other family members and neighbors come and look disbelievingly that so mighty an oak as myself is losing its limbs. Perhaps I have a disease of old age. Perhaps I could be treated and restored to health, but nobody calls a tree doctor.
“I’m scared of this tree,” the brother says. It wounds me to my core that anybody could be afraid of me.
He and the woman and her husband walk around my fallen limb. They look up at the dead branches in my crown and back down at the ground.
“I hate to say it, but I think we’ve got to cut it down,” the brother says. “If anybody had been out here when this happened, they would have been killed. We’re just lucky it happened at night.”
The woman cups her chin in her hands. “I hate to lose this tree,” she says. “It’s like a member of our family.”
“I hate it, too,” the brother says, “but the trunk might be hollow. Other limbs could fall. It isn’t safe to walk under this tree anymore.”
“Tell your grandchildren not to play near this tree,” the woman says.
I feel my sap go cold. If I could speak, I would tell them I’m not a threat. I would remind them how I’ve protected three generations of their family, shaded them, held the soil, soaked up carbon dioxide and given off oxygen. I’ve added beauty to their lives. Just because one of my limbs has fallen doesn’t mean I’m not alive. I still produce leaves and acorns and feed multitudes of creatures that find shelter in my branches. Among trees, I have counted for something on this farm. And now they are talking of cutting me down, killing me? How can they even think of it? I have lived these two-hundred years. Do they think of killing elderly humans who lose control of their bodies?
“We’ve got to face the fact this old tree isn’t safe anymore,” the brother says. “We’ve got to do something.”
The woman’s husband agrees. “We’ll call some tree people and get some estimates,” he says.
I am doomed. There’s nothing I can do to convince them I can still have a useful life. Too many branches have fallen. I might drop another huge limb. The next time, it might smash a barn roof or hit the garage or block the path, or worse, hit a person. I can’t help it. My body has turned against me.
Different men come, walk around me, look up and down and inspect the end of the limb where it broke out of its trunk socket. They look at the wound on my trunk where the limb broke off.
“The trunk is probably hollow,” one of them says.
“We can either top off the tree, and it might last a few more years, or we can fell the tree,” the head tree man says.
“I think we have to cut it down,” the brother says. “We don’t want to do it, but this tree’s now a threat to us.”
Three different groups of tree people come. They look up and down and talk about equipment they’ll need, and how long it might take to cut me down and how much it will cost. Killing me will not come cheaply.
It’s only a matter of time before they come with their crane and its bucket attached to a long mechanical arm. The man in the bucket holds an electric saw. He begins in my topmost branches, sawing, dropping branches that the men on the ground feed through a mulching machine. My limbs pile up on the ground. I’m being torn apart limb by limb, shredded into chips while I’m still alive. They think a tree feels no pain. But I feel each cut. They are amputating my limbs. Finally I stand a naked trunk, a botanical amputee, no longer a mighty oak.
The people walk around me. The woman and her brother shake their heads. “I can hardly stand it,” she says. “This tree is part of our family history.”
“I know,” the brother says, wiping his eyes. At least they are sad. They will grieve for me, but they will not save me.
When only the last 20 feet of my trunk are left standing, they prepare to finish me off. They saw through my 18-foot girth. Sawing, sawing because it’s now clear I’m not hollow. My trunk is still strong solid oak, but it’s too late. You cannot reattach oak limbs. I am stripped bare, ready for execution.
When the saw blade slices through enough of my girth, they angle me for the fall, and with a mighty roar, my trunk smashes into the ground, whipping up clouds of dust. They walk around me and lean against me for photos. A reporter from the local weekly newspaper is here talking to the family and snapping pictures for a story. I am one of the oldest oak trees in the county and my end is newsworthy.
The author and her husband, Ed Bland, next to the trunk of the fallen tree
If only the reporter could interview me. If only I could tell her of the times I’ve lived through–the rains, snows, ice storms and hurricanes, the people who have worked this farm and relaxed in my shade. I have felt the force of ferocious winds and been weighted down with ice coating my limbs. That I stood strong for so long is a testament to my strength. Life hasn’t all been wonderful, but life is never just one way, either good or bad. Even for a tree, life is a mix. Dropping your leaves every year and going into botanical hibernation to get through winter is stressful. Some years the weight of the ice was too much, and branches broke off. I looked forward to the warmth of spring and the tingling burst of new leaves. I felt protected when foliage covered my body and sheltered me from the elements. But those are all memories, as dead as fallen leaves.
What’s left of me lies on the ground. I am severed from my trunk, my circulation cut off, sap oozing from my body. I have laid down my last tree ring. If they count the rings, they will know for sure how long I lived. The woman says she would like a round of my trunk to make into a table. Her brother says oak wood will burn well in his fireplace stove. My mulch pile can nourish the garden. Most of my remains can be recycled. I will not be a total waste. I will still count for something. Perhaps I will even nourish another oak seedling. I have surely produced enough acorns to birth thousands of generations of oaks. Perhaps somewhere on this farm, one of my babies is already germinating, one that may grow large and strong even as I have. Through some oak seedling, part of me may carry on and endure.
***
Mary Batten is a writer for television, film and publishing. She is the author of 16 nature/science books for children and adults, Her many projects have taken Mary into tropical rainforests, astronomical observatories, and scientific laboratories. She was nominated for an Emmy for her scriptwriting on the Children’s Television Workshop series 3-2-1 CONTACT. In 2020, she created a book series, Life in the Extreme. The first book in that series is Life in a Frozen World: Wildlife of Antarctica (Peachtree 2020). The second book, Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean, came out in 2022 and was selected by the National Science Teaching Association for its list of Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12. Website: marybatten.com.
