"small for an oak tree"

still bigger than most things, bigger than me.
given the chance, it'll last as least as long as i will, and it'll have to be uprooted to stop growing.

i always seem to grow through uprooting (or i think i do. sometimes in the dark between points of light i wonder how smart i really am, how much i know).

this oak has a great view of lake pippen and i wonder if looking at the same thing for 100 years without blinking allows you to see differences those of us with the ability to turn our eyes away don't or can't see.

the oak sees the sky, the lake, and the dirt under the ground - the last we only see once we're dead. that's got to teach you something. living that long has to teach you something. living and dying each year, over and over, subject to a cycle AC and furnaces try hard to blank out/erase.

this is the tree that embodies towner's woods for me, that embodies a place that in turn embodies the feeling of standing alone in utter, judgmentless green silence with your hand on the bark of an ageless tree that has withstood more wind than you could ever stand yourself.

it was the place where i could hide, but still be forced to learn. it was less a hiding place than a chose battleground, the bottleneck that i could filter problems through one by one instead of giving them the advantage of surrounding me.

it was the tree that was going to preside over my wedding, once. i bet it was laughing, knowing i was lying to myself even before i knew i was, the same way it probably laughed the day i tried to cross too-thin lake ice and almost made newspaper headlines by freezing to death.

it's the only tree i've ever had a name for. i called it fred. that's sort of stupid.

fred, i'm sorry for your stupid name.