Pin Oak Down

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

I was a thousand miles away when Riley, the "bomb cyclone" (or, more scientifically, "explosive cyclogenesis"), ravaged the Northeast two days ago. I did not hear the pin oak in my front yard fall to the earth. Did it make a sound?

The point of a Zen koan, or riddle, is not to answer the question, but to contemplate the contradiction it presents. In doing so, the mind becomes empty of logic and nears a sense of universal mindedness. I would welcome an emptiness of my mind, as right now, it is full of sadness and hopeless sorrow. I loved that tree.

Or did I? I liked the tree. I suppose I took it for granted, assuming it would always be there. When deciding which trees to trim or take down last fall, I never once considered removing the pin oak from my landscape. At the base of my property are two very old and very large white oak trees, but the pin oak differs in that its upper branches point up, its middle branches point out, and its lower branches point down, giving it a luxurious fullness. For over thirty years, even after my children were grown, I have watched that tree grow taller. I have trimmed the low-hanging branches to prevent nasty encounters during lawn-mowing activities. Although I have cursed the late autumn barrage of oak leaves that swirl and eddy at the side of my house, I have welcomed the nourishment they provided as mulch for my gardens. And I have spent countless evenings alone on my front porch, contemplating the beauty of that tree in the glow of sunset. Okay, so maybe I did love the tree.

The mighty oak, a symbol of strength, stability, and nobility, has been considered sacred by just about  every culture that has encountered the tree. It has often been associated with the gods of thunder and lightening, such as Zeus and Thor. I guess my tree met its match when it encountered Riley, the God of Bombogenesis. Perhaps I should be grateful to have missed watching my noble tree try to resist the forces of nature, only to succumb in a crash of thunderous surrender. But I didn't hear a thing.

When I return north this spring, all signs of my tree will be gone, its body sawed and chopped into firewood for next winter and its branches mulched into organic nourishment for the soil. My front porch view of the Kittatinny Range will be improved, and there will be a third fewer leaves to fight with next fall. I wonder . . . for how long will I gaze out at the place where the tree once stood and mourn its absence? When will this new landscape become the only one I know?

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
~ Maya Angelou

The sound that I did not hear will resonate for a very long time.

Photo credit: Sheila Voelker Jacobus