Study the Oaks Closely and Am Still Confused

October 20, 2010.  Wednesday.

Situation:  I had to wake up before the sun came up to drive 40 miles (the neareast dealer) to have my car checked out for a recall item.  On the way back I was able to finish some work I had to do and got home about 1:30.  I have to work tonight, so I have enough time between now and the time I leave (about 4) to take Mway for a walk (I don’t think I’ll even have to take a shower, as I took one at 7 am). I’m bringing the Audubon tree book with me (looking at it briefly just now, I can’t see much of a difference between the photos of a pin oak leaf and a black oak leaf).

State of the Path:  Down at the wigwams, I lean my two sticks against a post that Moi has leaning against a maple, take off my gloves, and pee.  Before I put the gloves back on, I look in the Audubon to try to make a judgment about the shapes of the oaks trees down by the creek.  I see two where I first walk down to the creek, a smaller one which I walk under all the time, and a bigger one closer to the hedgerow.  From a distance, their leaves look the same, but from the shape diagrams in the book, I judge the smaller and more compact tree to be a pin oak (which is what I’ve been calling it), while the bigger and more sprawling one I think could be a black oak.  When I get down to the trees, I look closely at the leaves on the smaller tree.  The leaves don’t look like they have “deep lobes nearly to the midvein” and “wide rounded sinuses” like a pin oak should have, but they also don’t look quite like the photo of a black oak.  For a while I consider that it might be a scarlet oak, but the leaves don’t look like they’re turning a brilliant scarlet, just brown and red.  The leaves are a little tattered, and I regret not looking at them during the summer.  The bark on the tree looks closest to the photo of the bark for the black oak, and I leave the tree thinking that what I’ve been calling a pin oak all this time is probably a black oak (I don’t bother to look closely at the bigger tree because its leaves look pretty much the same).  Along the creek there are a number of oaks, and they look pretty much the same as the one I’ve just looked at, and I’m beginning to think these are probably all black oaks down here.  I walk the plank across the feed channel to look at the oak trees on the crest of the skating pond.  These oaks look pretty much like the other ones, but there’s one tree I have to stoop under on my walks and whose lower bare branches have prickly twigs I’ve gotten caught up in a number of times.  Audubon emphasizes that pin oaks have “very slender pinlike twigs,” and so I tell myself that these prickly twigs I get caught up in must surely be indicative of a pin oak.  The leaves don’t look that much different to me than the leaves I’ve been looking at, but then I imagine them to be more deeply lobed and to have more rounded sinuses than they appear on first impression.

State of the Creek:  On the straight stretch of creek I looked at yesterday, I can see more clearly the dark, Medusa-like weeds waving beneath the water.  The surface looks streaked like a finger painting.

The Fetch:  I take the same stance and toss in the same places as I did yesterday.  It looks like Mway is starting to trample down a lot of the goldenrod I want her to.