Two women stood in front of a canvas I’d titled “Oaken Umbrella.” They conversed somewhat secretly it seemed, sometimes raising fingers to perhaps camouflage their conversation. Other Meander customers were coming forth with credit cards offered and various images in hand. 

After glimpsing the two leave the image, then return, time after time, again speaking in huddled conference, I finally found a moment to chat with them. “Would you like to take it down to move it into better light?” I offered.

No, said one. “We love this but it’s more than we can spend,” said the other.

I briefly remembered the moment the picture was taken. This beautiful oak was on the Griffin Land on a hillside overlooking Lake Gilchrist, with its wide and staunch limbs stretching protectively wide to encompass the undergrowth along with thoughts and memories of this and other proud and stately oaks. It was much like the Heath Gunn poem of “The Spreading Oak” … broad and thick, and handsome trunk, supports the mighty branches, arching, spanning, spreading as if like Medieval lances … “

That is the thing about oak trees, which my partner, Roberta, refers to as “Halloween Trees” thanks to the often ghostly looking stark limbs that seem to jut from the trunks, limbs that are quite visible about now as the late fall has denuded many of the trees. Gnarly and stately trunks of especially the older trees, some dating more than a century in age, offer forms of visual poetry that nearly always grasps my eye.

About 11 years ago the Bonanza portion of Big Stone Lake State Park was introduced to me by a young woman friend, a night when a full moon beckoned in the sky far above the hillside prairie of the park. There, standing all alone away from a small oaken savanna in an abbreviated ravine, was an oak I’ve since photographed numerous times. By now the tree is an old friend, one you feel you should reach out to now and then just to see how things are going.

Stoic and strong, standing in the text of time, there isn’t much of a shared conversation. Yet, even one-sided I can feel the strength and independence of the lone oak. A few years ago a devastating derecho came in off Big Stone Lake to raise havoc with many of the aged-old oaks both along the lakeside and there in the ravines of the prairie hillside. All that damage is still quite visible as most was left in place thanks to this being a “natural act of nature.” Yet, this single oak suffered no damage.

Just a few days ago we were ambling through the Bonanza searching for possible deer images when the afterglow of the prairie sunset painted an incredible orangish blaze in the grasses beyond the limbs of yet another old oak nearby. Roberta’s “Halloween” look of the old limbs snaked poetically from the trunk, somewhat silhouetted against the vivid color of the late sun-kissed prairie grasses that provided a splendid background. 

Oaks have long sought my eye. Where I was raised in the hilly northeastern portion of Missouri,  the oaks on our farm were as dynamic to me as the shagbark hickories, and both were so unique and visually beautiful. Sometimes I would stop my horse to rein in that picturesque beauty, or if I was on a tractor mowing the hillsides, I would momentarily stop in awe. Now deep into retirement I still find an excuse to drive back onto the land now farmed by my nephew just to soak in the views of those old trees once again. And yes, most still grace those grassy hillsides all these years later.

On a Thanksgiving weekend evening a few years back, one of those old oak trees defied its  forestal surroundings with broad shouldered limbs defining its existence, limbs emerging from the dabbing of purplish leaves all around. My camera was raised to record this moment of late afternoon beauty. 

It didn’t take much imagination for me to close my eyes and have a running mental “film” rush though my memory of dozens of other encounters with various oak trees besides this one on the Griffin Land. Not long after my introduction to forest bathing a few years ago, that mix of nature with meditative breathing and awareness, i was on a Master Naturalist field trip in a Driftless forest near Redwing, MN, when I realized I was standing beneath an incredible theatre of oaken beauty. Leaning against a trunk and looking upwards into the branches and twigs, small immature leaves were starting to break from the buds. Almost involuntarily my breathing slowed and the meditation and kinship eased over me. 

Yes, I lifted the camera to take a few images of the canopy, and moments later trying to catch up with the rest of the tour, I found myself turning to gaze back at what was now stoic and strong old friends, taking different pictures of the oaks from various angles, even from a distant hill where the leader had taken us. I wasn’t a very attentive student, I’m afraid, although my guess was that the guide would have thoroughly understood.

So the two women were back at the canvas of the Griffen oak when one said, “We looked through all your matted prints for a smaller one, something closer to our budget and couldn’t find one.”

“You see,” added the other woman, “a few months ago a dear friend of ours died of MS, and to her there was nothing more beautiful and meaningful than an old oak tree. Like this one. We were considering this as a memorial tribute to her.”

I asked if they had a few moments, that I would run down to my workbench and make them a print. As much as they seemed pleased with the gesture, there was a sense of kinship with someone I didn’t know who must have understood the lure of the beauty of such strong, stately and beautiful trees … the oaks.