chestnuts and bears

 

Henry Chestnut Seed

over sixty years ago I first heard of the chestnut blight,

I saw the huge trunks of felled American chestnuts,

like huge white marble pillars from a long-lost temple,

they were all over the high hollows of my Smokies,

I admired their logs made into cabins and barns,

and split-rail fences,

the wonder of the tragedy of their loss, though,

was the devastating loss of their nuts for the eco-system,

imagine if corn were no longer available to the farmer,

for the chestnut was ubiquitous and hearty 

for humans, livestock, and native animals,

just as many of us now are people of the corn,

so were those at the time people of the chestnut,

I felt, then, for the bears,

who must put on pounds of weight each day

from the time of the Equinox, 

through the bounty of October,

during the last century only acorns

have been plentiful enough, most times, for their need,

the acorns' tannin a bitter herb to substitute

for the sweet, giving chestnut,

so over 60 years ago I planted several Chinese chestnut trees

at our place near Gatlinburg,

in my naiveté I imagined myself as Henry Chestnut Seed,

carrying and planting my chestnuts all over the mountains,

I didn't get that my trees would be non-native invasives,

and they couldn't compete anyway with the lordly tulip poplars,

Chinese chestnut trees stop reaching for the sky

once they're about a beech tree's height,

the poplar and buckeye and oak

would then transcend them,

and shadow them into non-existence,

now at our mountain place we have our Chinese chestnuts

bearing freely, and fully, in our yard,

hard by the national park,

for the first time, this week I am here

when the chestnuts are fully here,

today I watched a large, maybe 300 pound bear,

spend at least an hour finding and consuming the chestnuts,

later wild turkeys foraged the yard for bits of nuts not swallowed by the bear,

the next day a mama bear and her four cubs enjoyed what they could find,

I love it that I can see and revel

that my dream for another species

has come true enough to help some bears

to have chestnuts in their diet, 

a soft memory of the past,

soon they will search for white oaks,

whose acorns will allow their necessary fattening

and be less bitter than what their cousins can provide,

somehow I imagine they mourn the loss of the chestnuts,

I certainly do, and I also never knew them in their prime.

by Henry H. Walker

September 20, ‘25