This week I transplanted a red oak sapling from the edge to the middle of our yard. Calling it a sapling is actually optimistic. It is a very small stem with a few leaves attached that took hold among the vines and brambles probably last year about this time. It probably would not have made it where it sprouted. Its chances to survive and flourish are far better in the wide open space behind the house. If we’re lucky, the tree will serve as anchor and shade to all we can see beyond our window. Not in our own lifetime, of course, but that’s exactly the point. As we work to minimize, over time, the lawn in our yard in favor of native plants and trees, how can we resist the chance to include one that experts recommend above all others (oaks support 897 caterpillar species alone and live over 300 years)? Not many people have room for the breadth of a majestic full grown oak, but we do. It is a luxury that we are willing, perhaps have an obligation to share.

I despair sometimes about the state of the world and the future of our fragile planet. I have trouble reading the newspaper or watching the news any longer, so fractured is the country, so insurmountable, it seems, the problems in both the human and the natural world, and so helpless I feel to make a difference. I am prone to despair when I think about what we are leaving our children and grandchildren. I cannot imagine that next week’s election will make me feel better, no matter who wins, given the rhetoric that seems likely to follow, the anger that seems to grow ever more vociferous. But next week I will squelch my angst and vote, and I will water my oak sapling, investing in a future I will not live to see but am hoping will be better than today.