Slow-turning oaks offer autumn solace

At those times, I always come back to my favorite Southern Oregon hardwood, the Oregon white oak.

For sheer blasts of gold or yellow, this species can never compete with the vine maple or Oregon ash, but what it does have is a quiet persistence. Many white oak leaves linger far into November, well after most other hardwoods have left theirs on the ground in brown heaps.

Oak leaves have a surprising fall tonal variation, too. Depending on the tree, they turn red, orange, gold or tan, with two or more of these hues often visible in a single leaf.

There are many good places to see these trees — up Dead Indian Memorial Road toward Lake of the Woods, on the trail to either of the Table Rocks, on the Tunnel Ridge Trail above the Little Applegate River or anywhere in the lower reaches of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

Because they grow so well in so many places in Jackson County, you’ll find some with leaves just beginning to turn on one site, while trees on other sites already seem well into their autumnal change.

Advertisement

Oregon white oaks will root on slopes too dry for conifers, another aspect of their resiliency. Somewhat resistant to fire, their seeds sprout and thrive in areas that have been burned over, eventually providing forage for a wide range of animals — among them deer, mice, squirrels, band-tailed pigeons and acorn woodpeckers.

These oaks tend to be scrubbier in size than California black oaks, which also grow here, but their whitish bark is more beautiful, its tissue-like wood seeming to mirror the sun’s light.

White oaks are linked closely with the region’s native peoples. Their acorns were an important food source, ground into a meal to supplement the Indians’ diet of game.

Although, many Oregon white oaks have been cut to make way for development, they once were dominant in inland valleys, forming extensive oak savannas.

All trees convey something to us by their shape. Oregon white oaks will never compete with ponderosa pines or Douglas firs for stateliness, but the gnarled architecture of their branches seems seasoned, stoic.

In February 2001, walking along a gravel road near Buckhorn Springs, about 15 miles from Ashland, this wiry tenacity was brought home to me in a startling way. I came upon a white oak near a small bridge. The tree was leaning over Buckhorn Creek, seemingly on the brink of falling in, half of its roots exposed to the air. Yet the tree appeared to be standing its ground, still locked firmly to the streambank. Fascinated, I sat by the bridge looking at it, writing down my impressions, which in time became a poem.

THE OAK ACROSS THE RIVER

It did not need this bridge across the flow,

but bent its limbs

over the current anyway,

half-rooted to one side.

We would call it an act of giving,

this leaning into what must come.

We would be fragile with this gift,

one foot on the bank,

ready to take it back.

But the oak knows that banks wear away,

that a tree must pitch and stretch

out of the half-roots of its being

with nothing to give it ground,

clinging to whatever it can.

Seven months later, in the aftermath of 9/11, I recalled this oak and its lesson of endurance. Every October, as white oaks all across Southern Oregon turn the region’s foothills a gradual, steadfast maroon, beige or light orange, I remember it again, and imagine the oak still there, bent over the river, holding on. Somehow, in the long darkness of winter, there is comfort in that.

Steve Dieffenbacher can be reached by e-mail at sdieffenbacher@mailtribune.com