Red Hawk Rustic

The other week I went for a walk in the woods and met Winter in one of her lovelier moods.  There was still snow on the ground and it was cold, but not piercing.  The air felt fresh and moist and was a pleasure to inhale.  It was morning, before 9 o'clock and the sky was pastel blue, pink, and yellow--it glowed from the inside like mother-of-pearl, or an opal.  It had that special luminescence that I love and  see only in winter. 

I walked all the way through the back pasture and up through the woods trail to sit on the porch swing that John put up between two trees.  The swing looks out over one of my favorite section of woods, what I call the Beech Tree Forest, even though there aren't really a whole lot of beech trees.  I like it there because the forest floor is relatively free of multi-flora rose and some of the trees are large.  They create a true canopy and the sunlight filters through, church-like in the summer.  There are some young beech trees in the understory and in winter, their silver bark and their creamy yellow leaves still clinging to the branches stand out in graceful relief against the black trunks of the other trees, and, on my particular morning, snow.

Like dogwoods in spring, beech trees in winter always remind me of lace.  I guess that's a bit cliched and I should come up with a better metaphor, but it jumps to mind, I can't help it.  It has to do with the way their branches grow horizontally, snaking out to capture what light they can under the bigger trees once summer gets underway.  The white dogwood blossoms and the pretty yellow beech leaves look like they've been threaded through a tapestry in an almost even line.  It's lovely, dainty. 

Beeches grow all big and muscular of course, while dogwoods remain demure.  I like the mature beeches, too.  They remind me of people more than any other tree in the forest.  Their bark is smooth, like skin, and it wrinkles like skin around the joints of their branches.  Whenever I come across a grove of full grown beeches, I become a little self-conscious, like they're watching me, and perhaps judging.  I'm worried I'll get smacked like Dorothy did by the apple trees in the Wizard of Oz.

Research into why beech trees (and oaks) hold onto their dead leaves ( a phenomena called marcescence) until the new growth in spring pushes them off led me to this answer:  No one knows.  There are guesses, of course.  Perhaps it helps them retain water throughout winter (but this doesn't make any sense to me, since trees lose water through the stomata, little pores, on their leaves).  Or maybe they are still getting some nutrients from the leaves (which also seems suspect since all the chlorophyll is gone and what's left are the chemical wastes from metabolism).  Or maybe it keeps deer from eating the bark since there are dead, crunchy leaves in the way (hmmm...seems to me that would not deter the eating machines I know as deer).  The best answer I found was that maybe it doesn't do them any good at all anymore.  Maybe it is a remnant from earlier in their evolution, something like an appendix.

I found that answer in a delightful article about the beech tree here by George Ellison.  He found a quote by naturalist Donald Culross Peattie that I would have thought came straight out of the 19th century, given the romantic tone of the prose.  This is the kind of stuff I eat right up...

“A beech is, in almost any landscape where it appears, the finest tree to be seen ... Far down the aisles of the forest the beech is identifiable by the gleam of its wondrously smooth bark, not furrowed even by extreme old age ... The elegant clear gray of the bark extends from the trunk to the main mighty boughs so that when the tree stands naked in winter it seems to shine through the forest ... As the foliage matures in autumn [its] delicate leaves . . . turn a soft clear yellow. Then is the beech translated. As the sun of Indian summer bathes the great tree, it stands in a profound autumnal calm, enveloped in a golden light that hallows all about it.”
— Donald Culross Peattie, “A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America” (1950)

Well.  So much for lace!  Have a great weekend.

A big white oak tree stands on the wooded hillside to the east of what we call our compound--where all of our buildings sit.  The cabin is closest to the woods, so the view from there is mostly meadow.  The line of woods on the left is like the edge line on a curving country road, marking the periphery of your line of sight.  The main house sits farther west, so the view from there tends to be the woods itself.  In fact, when we sited the house, I noticed that I could see my favorite curve of land from what would be the front porch.  That helped seal the decision of where to build.    

One of the things I love about oak trees is how they retain their leaves longer than any of the other trees around them in the fall.  This tree is remarkably larger than any of its neighbors anyway, but holding onto its leaves like it does gives it extra magnificence.  This is where the "voice of wind in the trees" comes from.  That's who's talking, right there.

I also love the color of oak leaves after the chlorophyll drains away.  The maples are glorious, of course, in their neon yellows, oranges and reds.  And I love the way ash trees have a gradation in color, from red to purple.  But oaks have a burnished look to them.  They always remind me of leather both in their supple texture and their color spectrum from oxblood to camel.  I'd like a pair of boots made out of oak leaves in the fall.       

 White Oak leaves sitting on a mission-style desk made of White Oak--a popular wood for that style of furniture.

A Bird in the Waterfall is a wonderful book by author Jerry Dennis and illustrator Glenn Wolff that I read several years ago.  From it I learned that a mature oak tree can transpire a lot of water in a year.  I can't remember the number they gave, but it was either 20,000 or 40,000 gallons.  On other websites, I've seen 200 gallons a day when a large, mature tree is actively growing.  Either way you go with those facts, that's a lot of tree sweat. 

I suppose that my oak has stopped sweating until next spring.  The abcission layer has formed, cutting off the connection between the leaf and the tree.  I'm enthralled by tannins, I guess (the comparison to leather isn't too far off, since people use tannins from oak leaves to soften and preserve animal hide).  The leaves will soon be off the tree entirely and I'll enjoy the broccoli-stalk shape of the trunk and branches and then look forward to the drop-earring flowers in the spring. 

What a tree.