Oklahoma Musings

Fifty years ago my dad retired from the Air Force and bought a three acre lot on a hilltop north of Norman, Oklahoma, where he still lives. Former pastureland, the developer’s aspiration was for the place to become a horse-owner’s paradise. Easements for riding trails were built into every property and plans were made for a great community horse barn. The horsey set never arrived, though, and those who bought property had other ideas, mostly in the “don’t tell me what to do” realm.

We put a serious dent in the durability of a Sears riding mower clearing away two-foot-tall weeds, at the time the only thing growing on the property. The nearest trees were cottonwoods spotted around a creek a hundred yards away. My dad found a builder to build his forever home, a nice brick ranch on the crown of the hill. Though we were never in real danger of freezing during a harsh winter, he surrounded the north side of the house with a wind-blocking line of Austrian pines, and my grandfather gifted him with a bucket-full of southern yellow pine saplings to make a further windbreak on the northern edge of the property. He then put in a large garden and set to work being the gentleman farmer he had always imagined himself to be.

Over the years many different trees have come and gone from the property, a few intentionally (he planted a half dozen black locust trees just to grow his own firewood) and others that did not work out as planned. For years he fretted over an apricot tree that always bloomed way before the last frost, netting him zero apricots year after year. That tree was eventually replaced with a Chinese pistachio that has done remarkably well (but to my regret, does not actually produce pistachios). The original Austrian pines lived for a dozen years or so before needle blight took them all out in a couple of years. The yellow pines have had a troubled history. Those toward the bottom of the hill shot up quickly, only to be laid low by several Oklahoma ice storms. Ironically, those higher on the hill, which always seemed to struggle to get enough water, have survived the years better.

The lesson for me, of course, has been that not all things are meant to live in all places. Austrian pines were a disaster all over the country a few decades back. Those yellow pines were adapted for Arkansas swampland, not Oklahoma hilltops. And it is always best to buy your fruit trees from a local nursery growing their own stock than from a fruit and seed catalog.

But several trees have done well and are now remarkable specimens. A pair of sweetgums stand near the back fence, tall if a bit rugged from the ice. I love sweetgums for their spectacular, multi-colored fall foliage. I also know they would have no chance of surviving Michigan winters.

An ash tree I remember as all of four feet tall now towers near one corner of the house. Closer in, a mulberry tree has thrived, developing the most spectacular gnarled knot of trunk and above-ground roots. My dad has admitted that one was planted a bit too close to the house.

The patriarch of the property, however, is a pin oak next to the driveway (and also uncomfortably close to one corner of the garage). A couple of years after building the house, a friend of my dad’s offered him a young tree for free. What he got was a stick with damp newspaper wrapped around the bottom. He planted it, thinking he would be lucky if it grew at all. Though technically out of its native range, the tree did grow and now dominates the property. The “stick” is now over 11 feet in circumference. Like the pine tree at the farmhouse, the oak’s stout, bodybuilder’s branches reach out over the roof as if saying “I will shade you and protect you, but if one of my branches falls: eh, you will be smashed to pieces.” A bit of uncertainty comes with all good things.

I think I was not meant to live in Oklahoma forever. The climate and people of Michigan have suited me well, and I have thrived there. But it is good to get back to Oklahoma from time to time, as we have for the past few days. The gusty wind carries a different scent here; the horizon seems farther away. From a south-facing window in my old bedroom the waning mood casts faint shadows on the bedspread just before dawn. It makes me feel at home again. We humans have the benefit of being able to keep roots in more than one place at a time.