A Love Letter to an Oak Tree by Rebecca Collins Brooks

February, our month of LOVE and exploring the theme of Love Letters in the Hudson Valley. Hudson Valley farmer, Rebecca Collins Brooks, and several local changemakers and visionaries were invited to express their ode to love in original ways, to honor any person, being, or place in the region. Today we shower gratitude and love to a magnificent oak tree.

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At the top of our hill, set into a hedgerow, is a white oak tree. Like me, she’s not quite as tall as her companions, but as she has aged, she has gotten wider and broader (also like me). Our tree is special because her age can be counted in the girth of her trunk, and we suppose she must be well over 400 years old. Years ago, my mother-in-law trooped all her grandchildren up the hill to span the circumference of the oak tree’s trunk, but all those linked hands couldn’t span that distance. She is a massive tree. She is a physical manifestation of all that is gracious and good. We make special trips through the year, in all the seasons, to stand under her branches, to gaze in awe at the width of the canopy over our heads, and imagine the things she’s witnessed. Once, a little boy was hoisted high in his daddy’s arms to sit on a branch as wide as a park bench. When his daddy climbed up and sat next to him, he said, “I think the Native Americans sat here, exactly where you are sitting, to look at the deer and wild turkeys and listen to the sounds of the forest, just like we are doing now.” With a wide-eyed and awe-struck gaze, the little boy whispered, “Do you really think so, Dad?” Oh, the things our tree has seen. The people who passed her by when she was nothing more than a sapling likely paid her no notice. And without anthropomorphizing about her, I like to believe that, in her own way, she noticed everything. She has stood vigil through enormous change in this world, but she remains changeless, excepting the growth and adaptability that only come with surviving struggle. If you’ve been paying attention, you are aware I’m calling our tree “she.” And that’s because, in our house, she’s known as Mother Oak.

Trees have figured powerfully in writings across the ages. I know from reading the poetic words of other writers that mine is not the only love story written for a tree. From a 14th-century idiom about mighty oaks and tiny acorns to the work of poets across the centuries, the shared human-arboreal experience has been well documented. We’ve evolved alongside trees to express more diversity and adaptability than mere mortals. Richard Powers wrote about our earliest connection in his bestseller “The Overstory,”  reminding us that we are more connected than we want to admit or might understand: “You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes…” Think about that for a moment. Breathe deeply into that thought and inflate your lungs with the oxygen trees create for us. We are genetically connected. Under the canopy of our Mother Oak, I can feel my body hum with the grace of that connection. The peace under her boughs is almost tangible, infusing my mind and heart with a rare and beautiful sense of love. I steadfastly refuse to equate this feeling with the Tree of Souls in the Hollywood sensation “Avatar.” There is nothing glitzy or dramatic about our tree. It’s a simple, spiritual act to stand next to her. It’s where I feel most connected to the divine and where I pray. There is nothing imaginary about her: her bark is rough under my fingers, her ability to be flexible under enormous trials belied by the solidity of her trunk. She is real, but she is also mythical.

Mother Oak has taught me important lessons about community. Without the presence of different species of trees around her and the supportive protection of the branches of others surrounding her, she wouldn’t have survived into her old age. In Peter Wohlleben’s new classic “The Hidden Life of Trees,” the role community plays in survival is laid bare: “A tree is not a forest…On its own a tree… is at the mercy of the wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem… And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old. To get to this point, the community must remain intact no matter what. If every tree were looking out only for itself, then quite a few of them would never reach old age… Every tree would suffer.” The metaphor inherent in this description gives me goosebumps when I stand under Mother Oak’s branches. She lives in a community of trees, not simply a forest. This isn’t just symbiosis. It’s a deep-rooted connection. The trees need each other. Trees don’t just crave fellowship; they require it for their very survival. Don’t we all?

We are farmers. We feed people. And this, too, feels like a direct connection to our oak tree. If we are genetically connected, maybe this desire to provide for our community harkens back to this prehistoric link. Once, in the autumn, we took a walk through the woods – the “back way” to Mother Oak, instead of hiking up the steepest part of our hill. We took three 5-gallon buckets with us. We were raising pigs, and we knew that pigs love acorns. We didn’t have fencing around the woodland where the pigs could wander, so we decided to bring the woodland to them. When we got to Mother Oak, we started to fill our buckets. There, on the forest floor and out into the hay field beyond, was a mast year of acorns. The acorns had dropped from the branches like a gravel pavement under our feet. Squirrels and chipmunks chattered in the canopy above our heads while we scooped huge handfuls of their winter stores into our buckets. They didn’t need to worry – there was more than enough for everyone. We had 15 gallons of acorns in only a few minutes. When we carried our bounty down to the pigs and dumped some into their trough, we watched and listened as their strong jaws cracked into them. If we had let them, they’d have gorged themselves. Much later, when those pigs were, in turn, feeding us, we thought the pork tasted extra good because of those acorns. Mother Oak had fed the pigs, who in turn fed us. A perfect circle.

I’ve referred to this glorious oak tree as “ours,” but the truth is, she is a boundary tree, standing tall from her place in the property line between us and our nearest neighbor. Her branches extend over our property and theirs, sheltering both of us but belonging to no one. She doesn’t take sides, doesn’t prefer one of us to the other, doesn’t discriminate. Part of her branches – the neighbors’ side – arches out over the woods, where her progeny grow nearby and where their community protects each other. And part of her branches reach far out over one of our hay fields, as far as her roots also extend. In this part of the field, the hay grows sparse because she uses nutrients from the soil to feed herself. But it’s also a place where deer like to bed down on hot days, and it’s from this spot where, on a winter day of cross-country skiing, I like to take stock of the Catskill Mountains, with our farm spread out below. It’s exactly here that I feel most at home, with the shadows of her branches sharp against the glittering glare of the snow. Last summer, we watched in horror as spongy moth caterpillars wrought havoc on Mother Oak’s leaves. Her size prevented us from mitigating the harm, so all we could do was watch. And hope. I walked up through the woods to visit her, and standing there quietly next to her, I could hear the crunching of those horrid creatures as they destroyed her leaves. Tiny particles fell around me in a veil of dust. I placed my hand on her trunk, trying to send positive thoughts up through the xylem and phloem, praying for her survival. I needn’t have feared. While most autumns turn her leaves to rich, vibrant gold, last autumn, new leaves burst from the tips of her branches, bright yellow-green against the backdrop of the woods. From our porch, we watched her come back to life. An oak tree doesn’t need to reinvent itself to remain relevant. It just “is.” Mother Oak is steadfast, swaying in winds that worry us but that she handles with strength, even as nature prunes her weakest branches. I hope our genetic code is connected enough that I share some of her traits, especially this one.

I recently heard a story that touched my heart and reminded me of the connection my husband and I feel for Mother Oak. A young woman posted on social media that her father had planted a giant sequoia seedling for her on the day she was born. They are both now 32 years old. Giant sequoia trees live to be thousands of years old. Their bark is uniquely adapted to withstand fire; in fact, fire is necessary for their survival. Fire is required to open the cones inside which seeds are tucked. They are released only in this trial by fire to germinate in the rich forest floor. By sequoia tree standards, this one tree is still an infant. The young woman found a device that transposes the electrical currents in the branches of her tree into music. She’s made a series of recordings of the singing of her tree. I’ve listened to her recordings and felt a deep sense of calm fall over me; it’s a familiar feeling because it’s uniquely similar to what I feel when I’m standing under Mother Oak up on our hill, touching her bark, hearing the rustle of a breeze through the leaves overhead. Interestingly, Herman Hesse (a favorite writer of mine) wrote about the singing of the trees in his book “Wandering: Notes and Sketches.” Rereading his words after many years of being away from them gave me the courage to write this love letter to our oak tree. I feel less like King Charles, who admitted to talking to his garden plants and paid the price through the mean-spirited press, and I feel more alive, more awake, simply more. “Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth… A tree says: My strength is trust… I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live… Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.” Under the branches of our Mother Oak, I am home.

By Rebecca Collins Brooks

Read More Love Letters Here:
A Love Letter to Our Hudson Valley Rivers by Eric Archer Dahlberg

A Love Letter to Community by Amanda Cassiday

A Love Letter to Love by Artist Mimi Young

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Photos courtesy of Rebecca Collins Brooks 

Rebecca Collins Brooks is a farmer, writer and farmstead cheesemaker at Hilltop Farm in Accord, NY.  She is the creator and founder of The Meeting of the Milkmaids, a gathering of women working in the cheese and dairy industry. In addition to a small herd of dairy cows, she and her husband Barton raise Wagyu beef, selling meat to customers directly off the farm. Her best friends are two terriers, Winston and Molly; and Sylvie, a truly brilliant barn cat. You can visit the farm by appointment to see where truly good food is grown.

Connect with Rebecca via Instagram @catskillwagyu, on Facebook CatskillWagyu

Check out > INSIDE+OUT’s Spotlight on Catskill Wagyu at Hilltop Farm

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Click HERE for more of our “Love in the Valley” Series.