Your oak buddies are gone, too, deemed a hazard and liability to the cars parked in the strip mall. It s just you, lone survivor, at the furthest edge of an asphalt acre. As a living, breathing, sentient creature, you ve suffered years of drought, scorching summer temperatures, and the indifferent regard of hundreds of thousands of motorists. Your astute oak-consciousness understands the imperative of spring, to respond to environmental and biochemical signals that betoken new life. And yet, you understand also, in some primal oak-stoic mode of consciousness, that the odds are not good for a tender seedling s survival.
Pollen is the dice-throw of trees in the craps game of survival.
Let s thank them for their optimism, blind or compulsive though it might be. This article published in the Athens Daily News on Thursday, April 26, 2001. send this story to a friend discuss this story email the editor opyright 2001 Athens Newspapers Inc.