By Rawlins Gilliland, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX –
Recently, I was with a couple who cheerily boasted about their dinner tab the night before: $600, plus a $200 bottle of wine. With tip, a $1000 dinner for two. Pondering this excess the following morning, I and my dog were walking near the forest entrance when I saw a young Hispanic man carrying bulging plastic grocery sacks near the railroad track. My dog ran ahead, and was already with the man who was kneeling down over something I soon realized was an array of exquisite fruit. He told me that he was offering this as an altar among - as he put it - "God's sculptures, the trees," because - quote - "I ask too much of Him and I have been given more than I deserve."
That night I was driving and looked for a massive old oak tree that for 20 years I have admired. So magnificent is this tree that in 1989 when catastrophic straight line tornadic winds tore through the area, I had driven to see if this stunning specimen had suffered damage or worse, been destroyed. When I saw it was intact, I had knocked on the frame house door and told the puzzled and bemused owner how happy I was that her most wonderful tree was fine following the storm that had taken down many that were - like it - 100 plus years old.
The next morning, I returned to the woods where this young man had arranged the fruit, and like the Garden of Eden, was sorely tempted to taste some of it because it was lovely and perfectly ripe. But I knew that to do so would violate this man's privacy and dignity, so I left it intact and watched it decay over the days and weeks that followed. Part of me felt like I was wasteful to let it rot. The better part of me felt humbled when I and my dog went each time to view it.
Driving this morning, I once again prepared myself to see the lofty oak, "God's sculpture," as the man said, which from any angle is inspiring. Untypically, I missed it and made a U-turn. As I approached, I began to sense that something was wrong. And then, I saw: sections of the oak on its side, stacked at curbside for heavy trash removal.
In horror I stopped my car, and seeing someone near the garage, called out, "What has happened to the beautiful oak tree there?" The man responded that his wife "wanted more sun and less shade on the yard so she could grow flowers."
I went home and with my dog and returned to the forest, where the man had created the altar of fruit. I sat thinking about that which is truly valuable and meaningful in life, and that which is merely perceived to be. How the sense of well-being and abundance is relative and wildly divergent. How a towering monument in the sky oak, older than any human living on this planet, can be an article of faith and an example of awesome artistry to some while being seen by someone else as an impediment to the more desirably mundane.
Rawlins Gilliland is a writer from Dallas.
Read part 1, "That Walk in the Woods"
Read part 3, "At Home in the Woods"
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