Almost everyone can remember an exceptional tree, a tree that occupies a special place in memory. My special tree was in our front yard, and I spent long summer hours perched up above the street in one of its limbs, reading books and unseen by anyone passing by below me. If your special tree was not in your own yard, it may have been in a schoolyard, a city park, a garden or a cemetery.
For anyone who cherishes those memories, there's now a book that will bring back all those special thoughts. Photographer B.A. King has written The Oak Behind the House (Quantuck Lane Press), a celebration of a 400-year-old northern red oak on his family's property in Southborough, MA. Over the years, children scampered around it, weddings were held beneath its branches, and it was occupied at various times by kestrels, raccoons, squirrels, garter snakes and many birds. For the author, "the tree centered my life and my thinking ... akin to fingering a smooth stone in my pocket for calm and solace."
King photographed the tree for decades, at all times of year, in all kinds of weather, at different times of the day. The book contain 55 stunning tritone photographs that will bring back memories for anyone of a very favorite tree. In the introduction to the book, David Acton, curator of prints and drawings at the Worcester Art Museum, says the photos "reveal truths about the power of common experience" and invite everyone to share in family traditions, "loss and sorrow, redemption and ultimate understanding."
This book would be a perfect present for anyone you know who loves trees or who treasures family traditions.
I found the description of this book very moving. For me, it was a very old Beech Tree at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. I stumbled upon it during a visit there, and my spiritual experience with it began my career in Landscape Architecture.
Posted by: Susan Schlenger | September 10, 2007 at 12:06 PM