Inexorable

Today was my last day teaching spring semester classes at Framingham State: on Saturday morning, my students will submit their final essay portfolios online, then on Monday and Tuesday mornings, I’ll proctor their final exams before spending the rest of the week grading, grading, grading. Through long experience, I’ve learned that semesters move forward as inexorably as seasons: in some ways, it feels like the end of the semester has been a long time coming, and in other ways, it feels like the end of the semester has come (again) before I’m really ready for it.

The last week of classes is always a bittersweet time. On the one hand, I’m always tired and eager for the (brief) respite that comes at the end of the semester; on the other hand, I’m always mindful of how much grading stands between the last week of the semester and Done.

When I taught at Keene State, the last week of the semester was typically when I’d find myself looking out my classroom windows at Old Silver, the sprawling silver maple I’d nicknamed the Failure Tree before he collapsed with an earth-shaking thud three years ago.

Old Silver had a lot of help in his final years from the Keene State College grounds crew, who tethered his trunks together with wire cables, and I always took quiet encouragement looking out the window at him during the final weeks of the semester, when I was daunted by my paper-piles and unsure whether my students had really “gotten” anything I’d tried to teach them.

Old Silver stood alongside me for most of my teaching career at Keene State, but he never really listened to any of my lectures, preferring to figure out his own approach to “tree-ness.” Sometimes the most lasting lessons happen despite everything a teacher does—or fails to do—in the classroom, and the last week of the semester is when I find myself quietly hoping that my students got something useful out of my class, if only by osmosis.

I haven’t (yet) found an acceptable equivalent to Old Silver at Framingham State: I’m still getting to know the trees there. The closest candidates are the two massively sprawling oak trees on Larned Beach, the grassy patch of real estate between Hemenway Hall and Whittemore Library. Both of these oaks are estimated to be a couple hundred years old: one is hale and hearty, the other is dying after being struck by lightning, and both are slated to be felled later this month to allow room for new construction.

If you’ve been alive and paying attention long enough, one of the lessons you eventually learn (if only by osmosis) is that even the oldest and sturdiest trees eventually fail and fall. Some, like Old Silver, choose their own time, defying gravity with a little help from attentive groundskeepers. Others, like Framingham State’s two massive oaks, have their times chosen for them, progress moving inexorably whether you’re ready for it or not.

 

I appreciate this tree

I haven’t known the massive oak tree that stands in front of the library at Framingham State University long enough to give it a name, as I did with “Old Silver,” the multi-trunked silver maple that used to stand on the corner of Fisk Quad at Keene State. But the first time I visited Framingham State, I stopped in my tracks when I saw the massive oak that stands on the grassy slope between May Hall and Whittemore Library: such a large, sprawling, and admirably craggy fellow!

Because Massive Oak’s branches sprawl so wide, it’s difficult to fit him into a single photographic frame, so before this past Thursday I had only two pictures of him, both taken this past November, when a friend and I held an informal writing retreat on campus. When we arrived at Framingham State on that November day, my writing partner remarked how pretty the campus was, and since we were walking past Massive Oak at the time, I assumed she was commenting on how wonderful it is to teach on a campus with large, mature trees on it: craggy characters who refuse to be contained in a single photographic frame, deciding instead to spread into every inch of available space.

Because Massive Oak is both large and sprawling, taking up a large area of prime campus real estate, my heart sank on Thursday morning when I saw his huge trunk circled with pink utility tape. By Thursday afternoon, others had noticed the tape and drew the natural conclusion: Massive Oak is marked for removal.

On Friday–the Ides of March–an email confirmed our worst suspicions: trees wrapped in pink tape will be removed, trees wrapped in orange tape will be spared, and trees wrapped in both pink and orange tape will be transplanted, all to make way for a new Science Building that is planned for the site.

As much as my inner-Edward Abbey immediately considered an act of eco-terrorist sabotage–how simple it would be, I thought, to switch pink tape with orange, or to yarn bomb the whole damn tree–I’m old enough to know better. Massive Oak is too large and gangling a fellow to coexist with a sprawling new science building: new buildings prefer small, easily-contained trees, not a craggy behemoth whose roots and memory both reach deep.

Tree-removal is scheduled to begin soon after graduation in May, which means I and other tree-appreciators have the rest of the semester to take pictures, rest in the shade, and otherwise enjoy Massive Oak while he’s with us. We’re all destined to die eventually, and a terminal diagnosis–death with a date–reminds us to appreciate time with trees we might otherwise walk right past.

 

Budding out all over

It continues to be cool and wet here in New England, with the landscape luxuriating in its own lushness. Last Thursday, I went on a Friends of Mount Auburn walk with Clare Walker Leslie, whose Keeping a Nature Journal is one of the books I use in my “Art of Natural History” first-year writing class. It was too damp for (comfortable) field sketching, so we walked with closed notebooks and open eyes, simply to see what we could see.

Mount Auburn is one of those places where you always see something new, no matter how many times you’ve been there before. I’ve seen plenty of blooming redbuds at Mount Auburn and elsewhere, but Thursday was the first time I’d ever seen a large redbud with massive clusters of flowers blooming like pompoms on its trunk. A bit of Googling revealed that “cauliflory” is the term for trees that bloom from their trunks, and a quick peek at Wikipedia reveals that redbuds are renowned for being cauliflorous: a fact I’d somehow never realized. How is it I’ve been to Mount Auburn so many times without seeing this particular tree, and how is it I’ve seen countless redbuds blooming over the years without ever noticing that they sometimes bloom directly from their trunks as well as their branches?

In a place like Mount Auburn, you can never have your eyes too wide open. One of the themes of Thursday’s walk was how Mount Auburn is a “layered” landscape that operates on many different levels. You can visit the cemetery to go birdwatching, or to look at tombstones, or to admire horticultural plantings, or to search for the graves of imminent historical figures, or to visit the graves of your own loved ones. Both of Clare Walker Leslie’s parents are buried at Mount Auburn, so her experience of the place is necessarily different from mine, a frequent visitor who nevertheless doesn’t “know” any of the inhabitants.

Although I don’t have any loved ones buried at Mount Auburn, there is one monument I’m now officially “adopting” as my own. Despite all the times I’ve walked past the monument for Thomas H. Perkins, founder of the Perkins School for the Blind, I’d never before noticed how the grave’s weathered marble Newfoundland–the so-called “Perkins dog“–looks a bit like Reggie. Reggie himself doesn’t have a grave: J and I chose to have him cremated, and we didn’t opt to keep his cremains, recognizing that an urn of ashes simply couldn’t contain the memories we have. There’s no one place where I go to honor Reggie’s memory because his memory is always with me; still, I cherish the thought that every time I go walking at Mount Auburn, there’s a special stone there that reminds me of someone I could never forget.

 

Abeyance

Last month, during a freakish stint of unseasonably warm weather, our neighborhood maples began to unfurl leaves more than two weeks ahead of last year. Then, the weather cooled, and the leaves simply stopped unfolding.

It seems strange to see something sprout, spread, and then stop, its eventual development held in abeyance. Do leaves grow tired of being bound within buds? Do they yearn to strive and stretch? If I were a leaf or flower, I think I’d grow impatient during these brilliantly bright but brisk days: days when the sunlight says Spring but the wind says Winter, or at least Wait. Having waited all winter to unfold and unfurl, how can newborn leaves find the patience to pause?

 

Late-fallen

On a sun-soaked flagstone, a late-fallen oak leaf curls into its own shadow.

This is my day-one contribution to this month’s River of Stones, where writers around the world will make a conscious effort to notice and record some small thing every day during the month of January.

I will be posting my small stones here and on Twitter, where my and others’ Tweets will be marked with the hashtag #smallstone.

 

An urban forest

For years I’ve been photographing the ever-changing assortment of street art on the Wall at Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen an urban forest of graffiti trees there. Usually, the trees I see outlined on brick walls are painted by shadows, not by spray cans.

An urban wall of bricks is a bit like a forest of trees, each individual fitting among its fellows to create a larger, stronger structure. A quick walk around Central Square on a brisk Sunday morning reveals more than a few trees finding shelter in the city, undeterred by walls and fences.

 

Snagged

 

Withering

 

Aglow

Today it’s gray, chilly, and damp–a quintessentially Melvillean day–so I’m glad I snapped this photograph last week, when the neighborhood was on fire with autumn foliage.

 

The bronze age

There is a noticeable succession of color in New England in the fall. The brilliant oranges and reds come first, and then the foliage deepens and darkens into brown and burnished gold: autumn’s bronze age.