Very moving. Would love to see a better picture of that. Do you remember when we were children, and the trees were large and filled with mystery, the mystery of seasons? The chestnut tree on the street off Otis park, where mr. Parker rented a room and lived alone with his chaos of sheet music nursing his heart, wounded many years before, who conducted the cla fling school orchestra, he, a might oak, girthed with the concentric circles of life, surrounded by we acorns, was never alone until winter came and stripped that chestnut tree of its fruit, smooth and everyone a valley to be explored by hands and fingers voyaging along its different paths. There was only 'place', then, as time and it's rush had to await our growing out of our adolescence. Until that moment came, there was sunrise, sunset, the cool spring breeze waking us from a sleep resisted until the eyes gave up the light of the night lamp and our books, those magic carpets that floated above and to and fo everything, Indians and campfires, wild men of the mountain, 'mountain men', who lived to be near and far away.
And how we loved to gather those chestnuts "under the spreading chestnut tree" . . . And how our dad loved to quote the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.
Wilbraham mountain was covered with the rotting stumps of chestnut trees . . . the remnants of the chestnut tree blight. How sad it was. But now more sorrowful are the fallen trees, remnants of the tornado that visited our mountain several years ago.
Importation of the chinese chestnut in the first decade of the twentieth century was the source of the plague. The Chinese variant was immune. The effect on our chestnut trees coming in contact with a chestnut tree from another continent mirrored the effect that coming in contact with other people had on our Native American population. As much as 90% of the native tribes died of European diseases to which the Europeans had developed a resistance. In the Americas to the south, more natives died from those diseases than were killed by the Spanish blade. Check out '1491'.
Very moving.
ReplyDeleteWould love to see a better picture of that.
Do you remember when we were children, and the trees were large and filled with mystery, the mystery of seasons? The chestnut tree on the street off Otis park, where mr. Parker rented a room and lived alone with his chaos of sheet music nursing his heart, wounded many years before, who conducted the cla fling school orchestra, he, a might oak, girthed with the concentric circles of life, surrounded by we acorns, was never alone until winter came and stripped that chestnut tree of its fruit, smooth and everyone a valley to be explored by hands and fingers voyaging along its different paths. There was only 'place', then, as time and it's rush had to await our growing out of our adolescence. Until that moment came, there was sunrise, sunset, the cool spring breeze waking us from a sleep resisted until the eyes gave up the light of the night lamp and our books, those magic carpets that floated above and to and fo everything, Indians and campfires, wild men of the mountain, 'mountain men', who lived to be near and far away.
And how we loved to gather those chestnuts "under the spreading chestnut tree" . . . And how our dad loved to quote the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
DeleteUnder a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
Remind you of anyone you knew?
Both smithy, village, and chestnut tree all disappeared in the same generation due to the blight of the modern world.
DeleteWilbraham mountain was covered with the rotting stumps of chestnut trees . . . the remnants of the chestnut tree blight. How sad it was. But now more sorrowful are the fallen trees, remnants of the tornado that visited our mountain several years ago.
DeleteImportation of the chinese chestnut in the first decade of the twentieth century was the source of the plague. The Chinese variant was immune. The effect on our chestnut trees coming in contact with a chestnut tree from another continent mirrored the effect that coming in contact with other people had on our Native American population. As much as 90% of the native tribes died of European diseases to which the Europeans had developed a resistance. In the Americas to the south, more natives died from those diseases than were killed by the Spanish blade. Check out '1491'.
Delete