November 13, 2021
Halfway up the path through our ravine is a shagbark hickory tree that never seems to grow. It appears happy enough, but it’s been the same size since I was a kid. Presumably the limited nutrients from the rocky talus slope and the struggle of living in the shade of larger oaks has taken its toll.
Not only does the tree itself never seem to age but the hole in its trunk never seems to change either. It’s neither healed, nor deteriorated, in all of the years that I’ve known it. Waist high and facing the path, the hole isn’t very large – perhaps big enough for a child’s hand to fit inside, if ever there was a child brave enough to try.
My mom always dropped a nut in the hole as she walked by. “One nut for each safe passage.”
She was never very clear about what would happen if you didn’t pay – but I got the feeling it was a bit of a moral failing, something you tried to avoid as best you could. My oldest sister insists it’s way more consequential, with talk of vengeful trolls and such. I have doubts about this though, because for all the times I’ve been distracted and just hurried past, nothing bad ever happened to me, other than immediately hearing my mother’s voice once again, chiding me “where were you brought up child?”
Being that the tree is hickory, finding nuts each Fall is easy, but by Spring finding any kind of nut can be a challenge. Sometimes the best that can be found is a leftover cap from an acorn, so I’ll drop that in and hurry along – hoping that the slight goes unnoticed. When nuts are abundant, though, I’ll deposit a handful in hopes that it evens up the score.
My sisters and I instilled this tree feeding ethic to our children and to our friends – and to our friend’s children as well. In fact, when friends from Manhattan were walking in Central Park, they reported that their 3-year-old insisted on feeding a tree with every nut he found. He wandered about, nut in hand looking for trees with a suitable hole.
I said, “how absolutely wonderful!” I felt very proud to have had such an outsized influence on a child. His parents agreed that it was very sweet - but allowed as how it was also a terribly inefficient way to actually get anywhere.
Even though the number of nut-bearing travelers has grown exponentially, the hollowed-out trunk never gets full. It seems multiple generations of self-contented squirrels have been born to this tree, where all the children who pass by happily collect a winter’s supply of nuts for them. What an incredibly lucky family of squirrels! It’s possible, though, that the multiple generations of children are even luckier still.