Added on 02/01/2012Joke

The Olde Oak Tale


by Bob Wulkowicz



As a matter of philosophy and ethic, I try to only watch trees and have them teach me. I don't intervene as a rule and most all I've muttered and lectured about includes minimal intervention and staying one's hand until things seem a little more clear.

Some say this likely is the result of growing up shorter than most and having a big nose--a kind of delayed adolescent inferiority complex that has me much too much compassionate about trees. But, it does have its advantages as trees don't generally shy away from me and tend to let me see the things they engage in with considerably less suspicion.

I did once find a tree notebook (old bark with twiglet scratches on it) at the base of a live oak in North Carolina; the kind of thing trees keep hidden from humans to keep people from understanding that trees may be smarter than they seem.

Usually those items are kept out of sight and a tree fills out this journal at night when photosynthesis is shut down and snoopy people and arborists are off partying.

This oak happens to be a very wise creature by virtue of his old age; he's been through many hurricanes and still squatted right where he was laid whilst many other young impudent upstarts have been flattened by
the coastal storms. I was pleased to come across his log, as it were, and was able to make out a few things.

Mind you, it's very difficult to talk tree--as you might already have found out, if you've ever been to any conventions where a bunch of experts are jabbering at each other about knowing everything treeal--and
it's a damn sight harder to read tree. So, I could only translate a few observations from what would appear to be an arboreal historian/philosopher live oak by trade:

"There are two events," the live oak wrote, "that contributed to the decline of the relationships between trees and humans. The first was the invention of the opposable thumb. The second was the invention of the
chain saw."

"Those fools were once content to just live in us and we could stay in harmony. Then they climbed down and figured out how to work those damn thumbs and that was the beginning of the end. Every creature/historian I know links the decline of the planet to them people wandering around wiggling those ugly little thumbs."

"Chain saws were the icing on the cake--and you can't really use one without thumbs, which proves my point." "They all weren't very bright to begin with," the scratches continued, "but with a chain saw they could be a lot stupider faster."


There was a rustle in the leaves, and a little startled, I slid the bark back into the hollow beneath one large root and walked quietly away, trying not to disturb the old beast. Thinking about what he had written,
I decided he was wrong in his appraisal of the harmonies between man and tree. We only did what was good for them and they just didn't know it.

The chain saw was an awesome tool, I opined, as was pointed out in a recent post, "Most impressed!" Wed, 3 Oct 2001, and humanity was really getting up to speed. with things like the all terrain MEWP. Hell, we were really rockin'!

Besides, that all was silly about opposable thumbs. If thumbs were important, we'd a been born with all thumbs.

But then again that would have made it harder to pick our collective nose. And on the distaff side, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to keep our thumbs in our...


Hmmmm. Maybe that's what the old oak meant--we'd have stayed out of trouble and harmony would never have left.


Bob Wulkowicz