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Old Hickory Tree

 This tree will never die. Like all of God’s creation, it is eternal.    It was planted long ago.  The man whose family built this house told us it was here when the foundation was being laid.  It grew from a hickory nut which contained the seed of many trees before it, and they likewise contained the seeds of many years prior to that.  Can this tree trace its history back to Genesis?  Interesting thought.


Throughout the years I have known its shade and beauty - 42 of them as I write this - it has been more than generous with its leaves, providing a green canopy over my head as I  walked from the side door out to the driveway sheltering me from the spring rains.


It lit up the sky outside my office windows every beautiful sunny day of late summer and early autumn, like a thousand candles aglow.  As autumn hastened on, it would slowly drop its leaves, exposing the dark skeleton of its strength and resilience.


I was always fascinated by the spiritual illustration those dark limbs and branches gave to me - how in the spring time they were hidden  by the leaves until the cold dreary days of winter began to loosen the foliage.  Many dark times in my life I have gained strength and purpose and felt my faith grow as God stripped away my immaturity and “greenness” of my shallow living so I could see Him standing beside me and feel His presence sustaining me - the Presence which had been with me all along but I was too busy with everyday cares and struggles to even notice.


Old Hickory fell a few months ago in the middle of the night, toppling across our yard, just missing our house.  She had provided shelter and strength for a little avian  family, and I watched as the mother bird kept flying back and forth where the tree had been just the day before, apparently looking for her nest.  Whether it contained baby birds or unhatched eggs we will never know.


I watched as the friends who asked for the tree came and sawed it into huge pieces.  I picked up a piece and ran my fingers along the bark.  To quote a naturalist journalist, the bark looked like “the exfoliating crust of a shaggy old treebeard.”


The stump remains and so do my memories.  But my Old Hickory tree will never die. 


 For the last 42 years, she has shed many trymas, hitting the ground with a thud, exploding with a loud pop as we  drove our cars out of the driveway.  Many squirrels have run races through her branches.  My cats and I watched them jumping from branch to branch, holding the nuts, straining to reach the flat roof of my office without falling and making many successful landings, only to drop their prize and send it skittering across my roof.  My cats have been gone for several years but this is  the first year I haven’t been able to enjoy the sounds of rolling hickory nuts over my head.


But of all the nuts which have fallen through the years, or been dropped by the squirrels or rolled over the edge of the roof, some have undoubtedly escaped the crushing or being eaten by hungry squirrels making their winter preparations, and these will continue to settle in and produce many more as the years continue to roll by.


I’m lonesome for my tree.  I have missed her these past several weeks, but knowing that she is the progenitor of a majestic “lightbearer” gives me pleasure in knowing that in one way or another, she will live on forever.


Joan Rowden Hart October 12 2022.  Copyright pending.


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