An oak tree is an oak tree. That is all it has to do.
If an oak tree is less than an oak tree, then we are all in trouble.
Nhat Hanh
A majestic red oak (Quercus rubra) stood alone atop a hillock. It was almost a hundred feet tall and had a trunk four feet in diameter. Its stout branches grew at right angles to the stem, extending widely in all directions. It had a characteristic bark that showed ridges with shiny stripes down the center. It was a young tree: it had witnessed only two dozen springs, a fraction of its anticipated life span, and was still full of vigor.
Like all beings of its kind, the oak had grown in the very same spot itself, a small acorn, had entered the soil through a crack and had germinated in the dark quietly for over a year. When it first emerged from the ground the sapling followed its natural instincts and grew steadily upwards towards the clouds; it had neither the inclination nor the means to attempt to shift sideways or detach itself from the spot of its birth. To the contrary, its slender roots sought to drive further down into the soil, a process that would proceed continuously as long as the tree was alive. The oak was thus firmly secured to the ground and its trunk could swing a bit as the wind applied its force against it, but not depart from its location; the tree could bend or even break, but not lift itself up.
It was that lack of mobility that limited and defined the oak’s contacts with the world around it. Unlike mobile creatures, who had by necessity developed senses that permitted fast responses to outside stimuli, the oak only had capabilities that allowed it to fashion analogous, though limited, responses to its environment.
Its photoreceptors could sense light’s strength and direction, and allowed the tree to grow towards it, and detect its changes from day to night and from season to season, so it knew when to shed its leaves in the fall, bloom in the spring, or go dormant for the winter. It could sense vibrations in its environment, like subterraneous water flows (towards which its roots would move) or the threatening motions of insects chewing on its leaves (to which it would respond by releasing defensive chemicals). It could sense solid objects surrounding it and grow around them. It could detect and respond to chemical substances in the air and soil and respond to them with substances it secreted.
Through these means, which a more mobile creature would have found quite inadequate, the red oak was able to proceed with its existence serenely.
***
An early fall morning, the oak tree felt a series of motions disturbing one of its upper branches. The vibrations corresponded to those caused by the types of mobile creatures that would position themselves briefly on the tree’s branches and then would come and go, as denoted by the slight thrusts of wind that accompanied their motions. The oak felt no need to react to those visits, which were frequent and had no adverse effects on the tree. One of these times, however, the vibrations became irregular in rhythm and intensity, unlike anything in the tree’s dim sensory memories. Then there were a series of bumps and vibrations descending the trunk of the tree, ending up in impacts on the above-ground portions of the tree roots.
Soon the tree’s sensitive molecular receptors perceived strange chemical substances of non-vegetable origin near the tree roots and relayed that information to its interior to trigger a response. The oak responded by shedding a barrage of acorns down that fell in the general area where the chemicals were being discharged. The tree could not directly gauge the results of its intervention, but a strong agitation of the air near its roots evidenced that something was rising rapidly towards the sky and going away. Not much later, air motions and brushes against the tree’s trunk and upper branches suggested that the earlier visitors had climbed up and reclaimed their position near the tree’s crown.
Days and nights passed and the visitors remained stationed atop the tree, with frequent disruptions of short duration signifying that they were going away and coming back. Eventually, there were several successive disturbances of the air and then all became quiet. The tree visitors were finally gone.
***
Some time later, the oak started losing leaves rapidly and the air filled with the unmistakable smell of frass (caterpillar droppings) characteristic of a gypsy moth infestation. This was not the first time such pests had preyed on trees in the oak’s vicinity; when a tree was under such an attack, it released specific airborne chemicals that acted as a warning to nearby trees of the presence of some peril. The red oak did this, and increased its release of tannins to combat the invasion. Alas, these measures proved ineffective and the tree began undergoing severe defoliation.
It was then that the oak detected a series of motions up and down its branches and pulling on its leaves. These sensations went on for a considerable time, at the end of which the tree no longer experienced additional leaf losses. The scents attendant to a gypsy moth incursion were also slowly fading away.
The oak tree was incapable of reasoning and could not associate its earlier act to protect its visitors and the actions, of whatever nature, that somehow had been taken to relieve the tree from the gypsy moth attack. Nonetheless, a balance of sorts had been achieved and the red oak tree would remain standing, willing and able to host its many unknown visitors and many others, not of pestiferous nature, for decades or centuries to come.
END
Bio:
Born in Cuba, Matias Travieso-Diaz migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. After retirement, he took up creative writing. Over two hundred of his short stories have been published or accepted for publication in one hundred and thirty anthologies, magazines, blogs, audio books, and podcasts. A novel, an autobiography entitled “Cuban Transplant,” and four anthologies of his stories have also been published.