The "memorial" tree

As part of the recognition of my transition from "Professor of Psychology" and "Collins Professor of Social Science" to "Emeritus Professor of Psychology," Haverford College has planted a tree along Coursey Road at the edge of the old cherry orchard below the faculty houses on College Circle and at the edge of the new parking lot across from the Whitehead Campus Center. I was delighted that a couple of dozen friends showed up to witness my ceremonial watering of this Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus).  I spoke for a few minutes, reporting some associations I had on hiking down to the site earlier this morning reflecting on my own engagement over the years with poems and fiction about trees.  I mentioned:

• Robert Frost's "The Sound of the Trees" (d2 reading)
• J.R.R. Tolkien's Treebeard (the elves were always waking things up ...)
• Orson Scott Card's Xenocide (the pequeninos transmute into trees in their last life stage)
• David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus (Crimtyphon transforms his victim into a tree -- Chapter 9)
• A.E. Housman's "Lovliest of trees, the cherry now" (for the young visitor in Springtime)
• Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" (speaking of chestnuts ...)

and back to Frost:

They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.