Trees and consenting

If I had not been a high school English teacher, I would have liked to have been a botanist--and more specifically a dendrologist, one who studies trees. You see I love, and I mean l-o-v-e trees! Yes, I am a card-carrying tree hugger. When the flood of 2010 came, I wept to see that it had destroyed 25 to 50 trees in my back yard, (but of course, I was thrilled that most of my house was saved.)

Recently, in a walk at Centennial Park in Nashville, I came across the oldest Sycamore tree that I have ever seen. Sycamore is a favorite tree of mine, as I'm always seeing them when I walk along and paddle the rivers. Easy to recognize because of their lovely white bark and silvery leaves, I usually see them with somewhat skinny twisted trunks, but this Sycamore tree at Centennial had the thickest trunk and most beautiful leaves.

A very different, yet another of my favorite trees, is the ginkgo or gingko tree. The first one I saw was in the Japanese garden at Cheekwood. To culminate our study of the Eastern cultures though literature, I had taken my senior World Literature class to the Hindu temple on Old Hickory, then to lunch at Cheekwood, and then on a short walk, which ended in the Japanese garden, where we sat in silence. 

That's when I first saw the ginkgo tree in all of its autumn glory! Since they can grow to 70' in height, the one in the Japanese garden at Cheekwood had definitely been kept small, like an ornamental tree. The ginkgos' uniquely fan-shaped leaves start out green but morph into a golden fall foliage.

The ginkgo tree is the oldest living tree on the planet. It's over 3000 years old. This relic from dinosaur times was nearly wiped out during the Ice Age everywhere except in China.

The Ginkgo Pages website further relates that those Chinese Ginkgo biloba trees were mainly found in monasteries "in the mountains and in palace and temple gardens, where Buddhist monks cultivated the tree from about 1100 AD for its many good qualities." 

Plant collectors from the West eventually were sold on Ginkgo biloba trees and brought specimens home. Besides its incredible beauty, the tree's "good qualities" include medicinal and culinary uses. This year I hope to plant one of these trees in my back yard to begin the renewal of the trees in my yard.

So all of this introduction to the ginkgo tree is to share with you my writing class homework assignment for this week.  First, we were told by Vanderbilt Professor Victor Judge that each fall the ginkgo tree drops all of its leaves at once--in a matter of minutes. No one knows why or how this happens. Then Dr. Judge shared this lovely poem with us.

The Consent

BY HOWARD NEMEROV

Late in November, on a single night

Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees

That stand along the walk drop all their leaves

In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind

But as though to time alone: the golden and green

Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday

Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

 

What signal from the stars? What senses took it in?

What in those wooden motives so decided

To strike their leaves, to down their leaves,

Rebellion or surrender? and if this

Can happen thus, what race shall be exempt?

What use to learn the lessons taught by time.

If a star at any time may tell us: Now.

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So here's the writing class homework assignment: Write about a time when you consented.

I love this teacher and his incredibly creative homework assignments.

If you were in his class, what would you write about?

(By the way, I love being a student again, instead of the teacher.)

I'll share my essay/composition/story with you next week!

Until then, thanks for reading my blog!