Tales from the Coffee Pot

THE TREE THAT TOLD TIME

They say you can see time itself in the rings of an old stump, infinite loops circling around the center of a long-gone tree that at one time ruled over its corner of the forest. Each ring is a year, each year the passing of summer. The passing of life. But also the return of life after each subsequent winter. Sometimes, a tree tells more about time than just what its rings show. Energy, magic, power–whatever you wish to call it–flows through the limbs of these rare trees and contains powers beyond anything imaginable. This is the story of one of those trees. My tree.

My tree that told time.

Many years ago there was a small town in western Virginia called Burtonsville. Burtonsville could barely even be called a town–it was more like an assortment of rickety homes and barns placed along the base of the Appalachian Mountains. The community in those parts was friendly and welcoming to all who visited, though visits from strangers were a rare happening. Maybe a hundred people lived in Burtonsville, and everyone there knew everybody else; it was the poster-child of a typical small town. Most of the folk there were farmers or miners, and there wasn’t much in the ways of a diverse culture. But growing up in Burtonsville shaped me into who I am today, in more ways than one. My earliest, fondest memories are of those rolling hills and expansive, blue-tinted forests that seemed to dominate the land. Some kids back then believed the distant mountains gained their blue haze from magic that thrived in the woods, but grown-ups never paid any attention to those stories.

One day, when I was a little over twelve, I decided I would take an adventure up into the woods. It was summertime and school was out, so boredom hung in the air thicker than bumblebees and pollen. My classmates had all gone to summer camp for two weeks, but my family hadn’t been able to afford it that year. I was doomed to a two-week severance from everyone I knew. About a week into their camp, I loaded an old backpack with some food and blankets. I didn’t plan on going too far, but you never know. Those woods have a way of drawing you in and just keeping you there. The last thing you wanted was to be alone in the woods with no food or blankets.

I strapped my grandfather’s Vietnam War water canteen around my neck and began my journey. I didn’t know where I was going, just that I was going, and that was all I needed. I took off toward the mountains behind my parents’ house, just knowing that great adventures lay over the ridge and through the hollows that hadn’t been explored by anyone. The gentle hills quickly turned to steep slopes slick with dead leaves, even though fall was months away, but I made my way up the hill using the thick oaks and sycamores as natural handholds up the mountain. Before long I reached the top, where the ground flattened out and you could see for miles all around. In all directions the mountain range expanded, evident from protruding ridges reaching all the way into the horizon. It looked like God himself had draped a blanket of blue-green forest over the mountains that contoured to the peaks and valleys with perfect fluidity.

I stood on the highest point of the ridge I was on, where I could get a good look at where I would go next. Way down below me I could see into valleys untouched by human hands, where streams twisted down the mountainsides and poured into ponds and rivers farther down. A certain spot caught my eye, though looking back I’m not sure what seemed so important about it at the time. It was a simple hole in the treetops, like a clearing of some sort. In the middle of it, there seemed to be one tree, larger than the others, almost like the rest of the forest had taken a step back and bowed down to it. I knew then that I was going down there, regardless of how long it would take. So I adjusted my pack and started down the other side of the mountain.

Going down the face of a mountain is much faster than going up one, but the loose leaves that littered the way made it a lot faster than I had anticipated. I took one step and the next thing I knew I was on my back, flying down the side of that mountain faster than any snow sled could have carried me in the winter. I yelped as I went careening down the slope, narrowly missing the trees that flew up to meet me, and prayed I would reach the bottom in one piece. I did, finally, and I unsteadily stood and brushed the leaves and muck off my clothes. I was now at the bottom and in the valley where my clearing was, but now I just had to find it. I recalled its location from atop the ridge and made my way in the general direction of it. My fall had slightly disoriented me, but I was pretty sure I was going the right way. I crossed a small stream and went into thicker foliage, where the trees were nearly strangled by thorn-bushes and other shrubs. It was hard work getting through that tangled mess of briars, and my arms and legs were covered in stinging scratches by the time I made it all the way through, but several painful minutes later I emerged from the protective wall of thickets.

And then I saw it.

A near perfect circle of trees lined the inner clearing with unnatural precision, as if God had placed a great bowl down in the forest and forgotten about it. Green grass grew in the center, free from any weeds or thorn-bushes, and in the very middle of it all, an enormous oak tree stretched high into the blue summer sky. Its branches slowly swayed in the wind, whispering the quiet song of an ancient soul. Mouth open, I walked toward the tree and stared up at its beautiful leaves and finger-like branches. I felt that the tree knew me, somehow, like it was looking down at me with the same curiosity I held looking up at it. As I gazed up into its branches a single leaf fell from its top branch, spiraling downward through the still air until it came to me, and I caught it. I looked down at the giant leaf, veins of life spider-webbing throughout its surface.

As I held it, I saw something move beneath its verdant surface, the way sunlight reflects off the still waters of a creek. I frowned and peered at the strange green lights, and to my surprise I saw an image appear in it. In that green piece of nature’s paper I could see myself, but older, and I was smiling with some children I didn’t know. The kids were swinging on a board tied to the branch of a tree, and I realized it was the very tree I was standing before now. I watched in sheer wonder as the later years of my life seemed to unfold before my eyes on that thin green page, and then as suddenly as it had appeared, the images vanished. The tree shifted in the wind, like it was proud that it had shown me something important.

I spent the rest of that day just sitting with the tree, climbing in its branches or talking to it or just enjoying its company before the sun began to set. I know it sounds foolish, spending the day with a tree and treating it like it was my best friend, but on that day it was my best friend. With everyone else gone, I was alone, but somehow I had managed to find this tree, though in all honesty I felt that the tree had actually found me. I hugged the enormous base of the tree and said goodbye to it, feeling somewhat sad to leave it behind. The sun was starting to set though, and my mother would be worried if I wasn’t home before dark. I took one good last look at the tree, the many leaves it held, the tall sylvan protectors that surrounded it, and the thorny briars that kept everyone and everything out. It was all so perfectly constructed, like the tree was some kind of treasure that no one had been able to find before. Even if they had spotted it from atop that ridge like I had, they probably couldn’t have fit through all the briars like I had. They likely wouldn’t have given it a second thought. It’s just a tree, after all. What’s so special about that?

Unwillingly, I made my way back up the slope and down the other side toward my house, where my mother had soup beans, cornbread, and killed lettuce and onions cooking on the stove. My father came home after a long day’s work at the mines and we all said grace and ate.

Over the next few days there were events that my parents talked about in hushed whispers, things about the mines closing and lots of people losing their jobs. I didn’t really know what was going on, but I knew that it wasn’t a good thing for anyone in Burtonsville. The next thing I knew I was packing my things and getting ready to move. I told my friends goodbye, and the day before we left I spent a few more hours with that tree down in the circular clearing. I was sad to have to leave it, this time for good, but it was out of my control. I gave the tree one final embrace, and I swear I could hear it whispering to me through the leaves that rustled in the wind, telling me that everything would be alright and that we’d meet again one day. Sorrow in my heart, I walked away from the tree and headed back home. We were headed to a new town, with new faces and new houses. New trees and new rivers. Part of me was upset that everything was going to be so different, but another part held to the idea that the newness of my soon-to-be home would provide me with lots of adventures to go on.

Once there, I never found anything nearly as spectacular as that tree in Burtonsville, and I searched the mountains for a good ten square miles over the next few years of my childhood. The magic that had belonged to Burtonsville was simply not around in my new town. There were more people and buildings and roadways, and most of those trees out there had been logged and cleared away to expand the town. I don’t know if me growing up caused it or if the people who built the town did, but whatever the reason, there was no magic there. The years passed by, I went to school, got a degree, and landed a nice job in that town. I found a girl and married her, and together we had a beautiful daughter and son together. Life was perfect for us, and that old tree in Burtonsville left my memory, nothing more than a forgotten fairy tale in my head.

Eventually, I remembered the tree and its magic, and decided to return to Burtonsville and revisit the clearing. I drove back to my old town, about two hours away from where I lived at now, and shook my head at the abandoned homes and shops that lined the cracked streets. Burtonsville had dried up, like so many other small towns I had watched wither away and perish from neglect. Everyone had left for bigger and better things, none of them realizing that some of the best things were hidden away in the tiny places of the world, those places you had to really work to find. They never looked like much from a distance, just a small empty space in the middle of a forest, but they always had a knack for surprising you with what they held deeper in.

I reached my childhood home, which was now no more than a rundown shack with busted windows and rotting walls. I began climbing back over the ridge toward the clearing. Perhaps I would be able to buy the plot of land the tree grew on, then I could renovate my old house and let my kids grow up where I did. I could tie a swing to one of the branches and let them fulfill the tree’s vision it had shown me in that leaf so long ago. It would be perfect.

I made my way up the hill, panting and out of breath before I got anywhere near the top. When I was a kid, climbing this hill had been as easy as walking down the road. Now, though, my age revealed itself. I finally reached the top and (carefully) picked my way down the other side of the hill, crossed the stream, fought through the thorns, and reached the clearing. My jaw dropped, just as it had the day I first saw the tree, but this time for a very different reason.

There, in the center of a grassy clearing, amongst weeds and tall plants, was the flat stump of a long-forgotten oak tree.

I fell to my knees before it, a sense of forlorn sadness welling up inside of me. Someone had cut it down, that tree that had wronged no one. The image on its leaf that had appeared so long ago flashed through my mind, and I sadly sighed now that it would never come true. Who had cut it down, and why would they ever dream of doing such a thing? Of all the other trees they could cut in this forest, why had they chosen the one tree that was supposed to be protected from the world and its chainsaws and axes? With wet eyes I sadly smiled and patted the stump with its seemingly infinite rings. How old that tree had been, how much it had seen, I would never be able to comprehend. A shimmer caught my eyes in the leaves of one of the weeds beside the stump, and when I glanced down I was surprised to see the same leaves of that old oak tree, just smaller. On the grassy soil beside the stump, a small oak sapling stretched its thin arms into the sky, begging for a second chance. I couldn’t help but laugh, marveling at the sense of humor shown to me by a long-dead tree from my youth. I carefully dug up the young tree with my hands and lugged it back up the mountain, back down the mountain, and placed it dirt and all in the passenger seat, then carefully drove the two hours back home. I planted the sapling in my backyard and went on with my life.

Decades have passed since then, and my kids have grown to have children of their own who regularly come to visit their Nan and Pap here. Every now and then they come to my backyard, where they swing on a board held by two ropes, both of which I had thrown over and secured to the limb of that sapling that was now a tall oak tree. Today it proudly stands tall above everything else, holding its great branches out over my backyard and giving shade to myself and my family. My grandchildren see it as nothing more than their swinging spot–Pap’s Tree, they call it. Maybe one day they’ll come to appreciate it the way I did all those years ago, way back when I was just a boy in a clearing, spending his summer days talking to the tree that told time.