Just last week, the bare bark of winter disappeared behind a veil of yellow pollen, and re-emerged this week clad in the fresh green raiment of spring. While marveling at the pace of this dramatic transformation, Hoot Owl Karma encountered a young hickory just beginning to don the green.
For many centuries, the Algonquin peoples of North America prepared a variety of foods with Pocohiquara, a milky drink made from the nuts of these versatile trees. Early European settlers heard the word pohickery and soon shortened it the familiar hickory of today.
Impressive terminal leaf buds adorn the barren branches like a preening flock of otherworldly larks. Animated by the warm rays of the sun, the lithe green leaves and their sturdy petioles ever-so-slowly disrobe, first shedding winter's coarse cloak, then gently casting aside the diaphanous inner bud scales, exposing their tender green fronds to the fullness of April's bright sunshine; boldly taking their place as this sapling's photosynthetic dynamos, doing their small part to preserve ancient pocohiquara's place in the forest of tomorrow.
Awakening...
imperceptible motion...
irrepressible stillness...
paradoxical mysteries of the forest alive.
