Drawing by Lucinda Jennings
Drawing by Lucinda Jennings
It takes deep searching to find the silver lining in a cloud of COVID-19, but recently I’ve enjoyed more time outdoors than usual. Those of us fortunate enough to have remained healthy are adapting to changing guidelines on how to go about daily life.
With social distancing measures in place we search for alternatives to happy hours, dinners out and gatherings with friends. My go-to has been walking. Sometimes around the block, often to a nearby lake, but usually through Ben Brenman Park just down the street from my house.
During a recent walk, heading down my favorite path, I noticed a gaping hole in the tree canopy. Sunlight streamed through the newly opened space and shone on leafy heaps of broken branches, huge limbs and the immense stump of a once massive tree. But for the recent spring storm it would still be standing. Fallen across the trail, the hefty trunk had been cut into several pieces to remove the obstruction.
I stood over the exposed stump, marveled at its width, and leaned to casually brush away fresh sawdust. That’s when I noticed the growth rings. A lot of them. The more sawdust I cleared, the more rings I revealed. Intrigued by their clarity and number, I put my finger in the center of the radiating circles, and started counting.
“One,” I actually said out loud.
I started and stopped a few times, unsure of my accuracy, but several careful minutes later I neared the outer rings.
“Ninety-seven… ninety-eight… ninety-nine,” I said to myself as I finished. “Wow…”
Ninety-nine clear rings. Taking into account questionable layers near the bark and several areas made uncertain by chainsaw damage, this tree was easily a hundred years old.
One hundred years.
That means a tiny acorn sprouted and began to form its first ring around the time Warren G. Harding was elected president. Perhaps it emerged just as Prohibition was introduced. Or maybe it struggled toward the light as Congress guaranteed voting rights to all women.
A year passed, a ring formed. Repeat. No matter what… years and rings. Years and rings upon years and rings and soon Amelia Earhart was flying solo across the Atlantic, the Empire State Building opened, and one day wind whipped across the growing tree just as it did the flag that flew over the Winter Olympics in 1932.
The same year my father was born.
Passage of more time, formation of more rings. Growth was never deterred. During the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the launching of the Hubble Space Telescope, and even the horror of September 11, a ring was still forming. The extraordinary life of Nelson Mandela came to an end, and another ring formed, in 2013.
The same year my father died.
From the time it gripped earth as a sprouting acorn until the day a heavy storm brought it down, the tree not only survived; it grew. This majestic beast existed during years of peace and years of war. From its first to its last, so much happened between the rings.
As a sapling, it was already on its way to grandeur before my father was born and it continued to grow after he was gone. It formed one ring the year of his birth, another the year of his death. All my father ever did, and was, occurred between the few blurry circles I just counted.
I reached down again to touch that first original ring. I dragged my finger toward the outer edge, moving slowly over each of those circular markers of time. I stopped on the 42nd ring. If my calculations were correct, this one formed the year I was born, 1962. Odd feelings flooded my head.
Wait. How silly to stand over a tree stump and find myself in the throes of profound thought at the sight of a jagged circle. But I pressed my finger tightly against that 42nd ring.
No. It’s beautiful, I thought. That’s when I noticed a nearby sapling.
“It’s making rings,” I actually said out loud.
Somewhere in that young tree will be rings coinciding with consequential events all over the world. I remembered what caused me to walk this path in the first place. Somewhere in that tree is a ring marking the pandemic’s beginning. Somewhere in that tree will be a ring marking its end.
Extraordinary people, amazing achievements and unbelievable accomplishments will all be recorded within that tree. And just like my father, some lives will come and go within the span of a few inches worth of its rings.
I glanced back down at the circle beneath my finger.
My first.
And somewhere in the sapling will be another.
My last.
Important to ponder my rings. More importantly, what am I going to do between the rings?
