The old "Crazy Tree" had been burned or carried away in pieces when I returned to photograph it 30 years after it had fallen. But only a hundred feet away, on the bank of Bailey Creek, stood the leaning sycamore I recall having been there during the last century of "Crazy Tree's" life.

    A poem as lovely as a tree,” said a wise and observant Joyce Kilmer. Nor shall I.

    Kilmer spoke for the heart of most of us, and that is why we remember fondly the opening line of the poem ”Trees”, that he penned before he died in France in 1918 during an heroic attack on a German machine-gun nest.

    Pen in hand, he realized his words were subordinate to his subject. Although I am enamored with carefully placed words, structured with meter and rhyming lines, especially lines about the outdoors, the highest use of man’s beautiful languages pale in the presence of a tree; the Creator’s poetry.

Our special tree

    For many of us, there have been some special trees in our lives. It is not hard to pick my all time favorite tree, though there are many from which to choose a favorite. It is the old pine near Bailey Creek north of Meridian; the one my friend, Sonny Chisolm, and I irreverently named “The Crazy Tree” in the 1950’s because crazy (mysterious) things were always happening around that old ghost. We naively selected the undignified name before our budding appreciation of Nature matured. This grand old monarch stood beside the little stream in three different centuries. Mr. John Carpenter, of the Bailey community, said the tree had been dead when he first saw it during his childhood. Mr. John was born in 1891.

    I can find no evidence of how long the old tree had been dead before Mr. Carpenter’s time, but it had to have been a seedling in the 1700’s. When Sonny and I came along, the giant tree had formed its own monument. For it stood tall, slick and gray throughout its years in the 20th century until it finally fell in the 1960’s. The tons of bark it had shed over a monumental lifetime lay as humus some four feet deep around its base. And its sturdy crown towered far above the trees of a mature mixed stand in its environs, reaching twice the height of many of them.

    The old tree made such an impression on me that in my first book I speculate on its history and how it survived the crosscut saws of early European settlers.

    Another tree that causes me to catch my breath is the huge water oak in the front yard of my Mother-in-law’s home in Smith County. Its roots reach far into the stream of sub-surface water where three wells once furnished farm water. Some of its limbs are larger than many mature oaks. Long ago I measured the circumference of its trunk at chest height, the tape stretched to over 16 feet. It now has to be over 17.

Ensuring its legacy

 

    In these later years of the giant tree’s life, it is producing acorn crops that must reach into the hundreds of pounds annually, a typical sign of oaks in their last years. This is Nature’s way of ensuring sufficient seedlings for the future. And the local deer, squirrels and quail stay fat on its bounty.       

    Later the big water oak will meet the same fate, as did the venerable pine on Bailey Creek. But somewhere today a seed is sprouting; a seed of destiny. It will grow into a tree which will help define someone’s life. And it too will be revered and treasured. Other trees will root next spring and grow to find their places in the hearts and minds of the future. And they will bring enchantment that surpasses the joys of poetry.