Odysseus’ Tree

Odysseus’ Tree

It’s August 29, 2016, and I’m in Andover, standing behind Bulfinch Hall, where I taught English for 26 years, from 1982 to 2008. I’ve come here today to attend the interment of Jean St. Pierre, who was my department chair during my first five years here. She was a wonderful chair to work for, supportive and generous. She offered continuous encouragement for whatever whacky project I came up with; I’ve never worked for a kinder boss.

Jean is now safe in the school cemetery, and I’ve walked over to the building where she and I spent so many years together. I’m looking up at a huge fir tree that grows behind Bulfinch. Although few people know it, this is my tree.

In 1986 I was auctioned off at a fundraiser for the Arnold Arboretum. I used to give slide shows of New England wildflowers; that day a Needham garden club bid on and won me. As an honorarium for doing this, the Arboretum folks gave me a fir seedling about four inches long. I took it home and planted it behind Tucker House, where I was living at the time.

The fir did well there, gaining about three feet, and three years later, when we moved to the end of Stonehedge Road for a stretch of dorm-free living, I dug it up and moved it along with us. After five years it was taller than I was, and I realized its next move would have to be its last. I spoke to my Bulfinch colleagues for permission and to my friends in the Office of Physical Plant for assistance, and we chose the site behind the English building. As my family went into Rockwell, the fir went into its final site.

You might wonder why I expended such energy on behalf of this plant. Indeed, it might have seemed to be just a fir. But it wasn’t. For many years our ninth-grade curriculum included Homer’s epic The Odyssey, the story of Odysseus’ long journey home from the Trojan War. I chose this tree solely because its name was Abies equi-trojani, the Trojan Horse Fir. It comes from northern Turkey. By legend it is the tree from which Odysseus – that master trickster of ancient Greece – built the horse that hid the Greek warriors until they snuck out in the night, opened the city gates, and overthrew the Trojans, who had been rejoicing drunkenly about their success in hauling the massive wooden construction into the city. The Trojan Horse Fir: after it came to rest behind Bulfinch, I used to point it out to my students.

Now today, standing here looking up at it, I am so pleased to see it is still present, and to see how well it has prospered. It is huge now: about twenty feet at the base, maybe forty feet high. (The math department should assign trigonometry students to plot its exact dimensions.) I looked up the species on line to discover that these trees can reach 22-30 meters and 40 to 65 centimeters across. The needles are deep green, bushy, dense. Odysseus could have built the entire horse out of only two or three of these creatures.

The day is passing into afternoon. It is a lovely one, with clear blue skies, and that wonderful yellow sunlight that Faulkner referred to in the title of his novel, Light In August. I think suddenly of Jean, of her kind and generous spirit, of her love for the natural world and for books, and I think, Jean, Odysseus’ tree, it’s for you, and I hope that somewhere, safe in her alabaster chamber (as Emily Dickinson put it), she will know of her Abies equi-trojani and feel at peace.

John Gould

Jgould1944@gmail.com