Submitted by Andrea Crane, 6/07
This entry relates to past
Category(ies) of this entry:  Nature, Neighborhoods

 
On summer when I was twelve, I discovered the fallen oak tree trunk that was across the street from Holmes Jr. High lying in a field.  I would go to it and climb up on it and sit and meditate and watch dusk fall and sing and make up poems and hear the song of the wind in the weeds.  I would think over my past and my future, friends come and gone, and watch the lights coming on in the distance, see the stars coming out and see a barn owl fly by.  I would smell the ketchupy smell of Hunt’s cannery and see the cars with their lights on going by on Covell Blvd. and get to wondering why people are so stupid.  Would pray out loud and feel filled and surrounded by God as the mountains beyond Winters got deeper purple and an apricot glow was left at the horizon after the last orangey rays of the vanishing sun finally faded.

The oak tree trunk got moved to Valley Oak School for the children to climb on when a subdivision was built there near Homes Jr. High.  In the fall of that year, I started going out to the three one hundred year old oak trees that were in the field at the end of our street, the field where the Long’s/Nugget Oak Tree Plaza now resides after all three oaks were cut down.

The huge trees had a sacred presence.  It would be a ritual to walk across the bumpy plowed-up field at dusk to sit below the incredible giant oaks, leaning against the rough bark of the biggest one and watching the Davis evening fall. I prayed a lot there and felt close to Goad and nature.  Jackrabbits lived in the field and there were black and white magpies and flittering bats in the dusk.  Ravens gathered there in the oak treetops and called out as they flew in.  It was a very beautiful place, the trees with their numinous essence, their aging dignity, and all the wildlife around giving a lively backdrop to my prayers and songs and poems like I had uttered at the fallen oak tree across from Home’s that summer.  Tow very special places in Davis, made spiritual by the old oaks, the stand of tree and the fallen tree.