Genus Arboretum

Chris Stevens

Episode 4.25, "Old Tree"

What is it about genus arboretum that socks us in the figurative solar plexus? We see a logging truck go cruising down the road, stacked with a bunch of those fresh-cut giants, we feel like we’ve lost a brother. Next thing you know, we're in The Brick, we're flopping money down on the bar: wood. We're under a roof: wood. We're walking the floors: wood. Grabbing a pool cue: that’s wood. Our friends in the forest carry a set of luggage from the mythical baggage carousel: tree of life, tree of knowledge, family tree, Budda's Bodhi tree. Page one of life, in the beginning, Genesis 3:22. Adam and Eve, they’re kicking back in the garden of Eden and boom, they get an eviction notice. Why is that? "Lest they should take also of the tree of life, eat, and live forever." A definitive Yahweh no-no. Be good to yourself Cicely: go out and plant a wet one on a tree.

The trees indeed have hearts. With a certain affection the sun seems to send its farewell ray far and level over the copses to them, and they silently receive it with gratitude, like a group of settlers with their children. The pines impress me as human. A slight vaporous cloud floats high over them, while in the west the sun goes down apace behind glowing pines, and golden clouds like mountains skirt the horizon.

Nobody can turn a phrase like old Hank Thoreau, huh? More from him in a minute.

Hooee, Cicily. This is Chris on KBHR, continuing today’s arbor theme program live and on the scene with Old Vicky herself. Let’s keep on trucking with the most famous resident of Walden Pond, this selection from The Maine Woods:

I have been into the lumber-yard, and the carpenter’s shop, and the tannery, and the lampblack-factory, and the turpentine clearing; but when at length I saw the tops of the pines waving and reflecting the light at a distance high over all the rest of the forest…

[Chris reads from Henry David Thoreau (Library of America)]