Today, so far, is a beautiful not too humid, sun-cloud-sun day. It is supposed to rain tonight. It is already raining in the Pocono Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania, I have learned, three minutes ago. I pray for that rain. I pray for it to be steady and long. But there is no predicting, no matter the voluminous electronic eyes and associated machine brains there are. There is no knowing. Only guessing. And when wrong, floods suddenly rise in deserts, wreak havoc, and disappear as fast as they came, into parched, uncooled, matted, panting earth. Or floods come from rapidly heating thousands years old (millions? years old) glacial lakes, that tear down many-thousand high mountains, dragging bedrock with them. We need to rest from our consumption; consumption of new, consumption of much unnecessary extranea–words, thoughts, and items–tangible and ethereal. Hold onto old and value it. Reconsider it. Be surprised again by it. Delighted by new lessons from it, new uses for it, new value to it–without adding through new consumption.
I step on–in front of me now a pair of house sparrows are investigating the shrubs. These shrubs have housed cardinals, catbirds, robins. Perhaps this sparrow couple will be moving in.
I step on–today, while bicycling, I noticed a spot along the route that held a cluster of young oaks. A diversity of young oaks. I am happy at that. I pray they find the groundwater to thrive. The waterbody directly behind is not present at the moment. Not even damp. Just a depression in the ground indicating the route water takes when it can be remain long enough to run, not evaporate.
There are 600 species of oak native to the Northern Hemisphere. They divide into two overarching categories: Red Oaks and White Oaks. Black oaks are red oaks. Post oaks are white oaks. Sessile oaks are white oaks that I keep reading are in England, yet, there is one identified in my collection above and, if that is so, another growing tall and very proud a few streets from mine, (and I pray each time I take a turn on that street, that it is still standing, because it is literally the only tree on that three block long street, and it is in the small front yard of a two-family, and I just don’t trust the safety of any tree on any street, whether on public land or private, in this city. The Sessile–if that is what it is resembles the Chinkapin oak (in the White Oak family), and resembles the Chestnut oak (in the Red Oak family), grows its acorns on a very short stalk. Another as a Swamp white oak. Another as a White oak, plain and simple. Argh! A supposedly undefeatable defining feature separating White and Red oaks is the roundness (white oaks) or pointiness (red oaks) of the leaf tips. Even in the photographs above, this is not incontrovertibly evident.
I have been looking at, gazing at, collecting fallen leaves and acorns from, reading about and reading some more about, photographing, asking smart people about oaks for years now. Either am unteachable, or it is not as simple as red-pointy, white-rounded. There is a lot in my years that I have noticed there to be no absolute certainty about the differences between. Nevermind the preferability or the betterness or the necessity of.
How, how do we so readily decide this vs that? How are we so willing to stand immovably on what we have determined? Decided? Adjudged? Learned? Spoken? Seen?
Does it seem that every thing, idea, decision, perception, attestation, impression, ascertainment, assertion… has a shadow?
whereIwonder&why 