Eve loved oak trees, especially those few ancient ones who
had survived the cattle grazing on the hill behind her home. Her mom had
promised that someday they would plant new trees there. But someday hadn’t yet
arrived.
It was just few days before Christmas, and Eve was standing
beneath Greenbeard, her favorite of the Live Oaks.
She was looking up into the branches for the horned owl she had been hearing
from her mom’s garden. Suddenly a twig snapped, and a tiny acorn fell straight
into her mouth. Without thinking, she swallowed it. The owl flew silently away,
crossing the waxing moon.
It was midday, but Eve felt suddenly tired. She turned to
walk back home, her feet heavy, her shoes dragging in the lush grass. Sitting
down to remove her boots, she yawned, and stretched. Then she stood up, and
when her feet touched the grass, a bolt of energy shot from her toes to her
nose. Now she was wide awake. Everything around her was glowing, like the sun
was shining from the inside. She stretched out her arms again, noticing the oak
leaves in her hands... No, wait! The
leaves were *growing from her fingertips*! Her arms were covered with bark… all
five of them.
"It’s the acorn!” she thought. “The oak tree is growing
inside me.” But she wasn’t frightened; the acorn was from Greenbeard,
her friend. The sun was falling quickly toward the western hills. But for Eve,
time slowed down. Weeks passed. The grass grew taller, and golden; the breezes
blew it into waves. She flexed her arms with the wind, and each day when the
wind died her arms were pointing a tiny bit more to the place where it had
gone. The second full moon of summer rose, and poured cool air down the slope.
It swirled around her legs, while her head and arms still basked in the August
heat.
One October morning, all the houses were gone! Her surprise
disappeared when she saw the blanket of fog stretching from her knees out
across the valley. Meadowlarks sang their songs; Eve knew the words.
Winter brought storm after storm after storm, torrents of
clouds racing down from the crest of the hill, whipping her arms, soaking the
earth around her feet. Not far away, the land was sliding, leaving wet,
rust-red gashes in the green. Eve gripped her earth tight with each of her
thousand toes. Spring brought the birds: their nests, eggs, and babies; birds tickling
her skin, picking the insects from her hundreds of arms and fingers.
No hurry now. Nothing to say, everything to hear: the screee of a circling hawk on an autumn morning; trickling
water after a spring downpour; bat clicks on a summer evening; and deep into a
midwinter night, the hooing of the owls. Nothing to
do, everything to see: another May sunset, watching clouds of insects rise into
the golden light. Eve observed the slow circling of suns, moons and planets,
and she wondered: “Am I a tree, or a girl?” Could an oak tree smell the perfume
of tarweed in the September heat? Could an oak tree smell the bay leaves wet by
the first November rain?
Nothing passed by Eve unnoticed. When the cloudburst rolled
down the slope, she heard each drop slapping every blade of dry grass, the rain
racing toward her outstretched fingers, quenching the fire in her parched
throat. She saw every bead of dew strung on the spider webs of late summer, and
in each delicate bead the image of every other. She witnessed the hunting
mountain lion, the death and birth of deer. And she wondered: where are the
baby oaks?
Moss now hung low from her long, twisting branches. She was
stiff, and could bend little. A hard January storm knocked her down on one
knee, but she held her arms high. Spring came full of grasses and wildflowers
and cows. *But where are the baby oaks*? The insects and the wind were bringing
her back to the earth-- a finger here, an arm there. Every autumn, she
sprinkled acorns at her feet and yet...no little oaks. One gray day, an
earthquake lifted the ground in waves, pulling awngdier footing. Slowly she lay
down to her final rest, beginning a dream of green sprouting from golden
brown...
“Ee-eve, din-ner!”
Eve opened her bright green eyes, stretched her soft tan arms. She walked down
the hill to tell her mother about the most amazing dream. And an oak seedling,
barely a foot tall, stood in the hollow of where she had slept.