No sooner had I descended the sandstone staircase leading to the ancient tree trail at Cross Timbers State Park near Toronto Point, than a white-tailed doe erupted from the undergrowth and set to crashing through the forest.
Like the name implies — though no one is for sure — this is a place of crossing-through.
I watched as she explosively kicked her hind legs and bright tail into the air, not weightlessly, but as if she’d been catapulted via some sort of natural machine.
It was my first signal to stop and take in the surroundings, rigorously hesitate and study the forest now engulfing me on all sides.
Here, a fern. There, a moss-covered rock. Few flowers. Innumerable saplings.
One could learn the name and nature of one thing a day, and barely finish in a lifetime.
First on my list were two of the deciduous standouts on this arboreal island in the Chautauqua Hills, as it stretches north from Texas through Oklahoma: the post oak (Quercus stellata) and the blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica).
You can tell them apart by their leaves.
Post oaks have five distinct shapes that look somewhat like a cross or star (“stellata” roughly means “star” in Latin, based on hairs that grow on the bottom of leaves), whereas blackjacks have three shapes that look somewhat like a bell.
Post oaks and blackjacks both grow acorns, which in turn are eaten by deer and turkeys, but post oaks reproduce more quickly, in their first summer, as opposed to blackjacks which need about 18 months to mature.
Both are also pretty hardy, “tough but ugly,” as one saying goes — evinced by their scaly, armored bark — and they can grow in poor, dry soil where few other plants can survive.
In 1982, scientists from the Tree-ring Laboratory at the University of Arkansas drilled samples from several tree trunks near the Toronto Lake area and determined them to date anywhere from 1727 to 1863.
This means that the youngest tree sampled was born during the Civil War, and the most senior was more than 50 years older than the United States itself.
AFTER taking a seat beneath the large sandstone outcropping that had been converted into a shelter, I watched a spider frantically kicking her legs as she spun.
Over and over she turned, weaving, as if threading time itself, such that the afternoon forest shuddered in stillness around her.
The lapping of the waves on Toronto Lake at the base of the hill intertwined with bird calls and wind and amorous insects.
