Keeper Of The Tree Offers Tribute To Nature

Published 4:41 pm Thursday, November 4, 2010

Local author Francis Wood's recently released book, The Keeper of the Trees, is smaller than many of his previous 18 books, but the message it presents is as big as all outdoors.

“This story is really my ode to nature,” Wood stated.

Originally the author had planned to release two books this year.

Email newsletter signup

“I had just finished a Christmas novel and was well into another one I was planning to complete,” the author explained. “Right in mid-stream I decided I wanted to do a little book this year – 50 pages or less.”

“I hit it right on the head,” he added of the book that ends on page 50.

Martha Pennington Louis, a local artist, illustrated The Keeper of the Tree.

“I've worked with this artist before in Sunflower, The Angel Carver, and Two Tales, and a Pipe Dream,” Wood noted. “She can read a story and catch on to what I want right away.”

The story for Keeper of the Tree came about one morning when the author was sitting on his back porch.

“It was not long after daybreak, and the forest was just coming alive,” he related. “It was a beautiful, perfect morning. The story just happened – it was just listening to nature. Over three days I wrote it.”

The story begins with a family outing. Thomas Elery is leading his son and daughter-in-law and two grandchildren to a favorite spot in the forest. He has a special story to tell about a very special tree.

“Does it still grow, Dad?” the younger man asked. A grin spread across Thomas's face. “It still grows, all right.” He gazed at the magnificent tree. “Look at it. As healthy as it can be. The only one of its kind anywhere around.”

The story of the tree, which Thomas has gathered his family to tell, began nearly 90 years before with Samuel Elery, Thomas' uncle who raised him like a father. While walking in the forest Samuel discovered one of nature's small mysteries.

Samuel Elery came upon a mystery as he tracked a buck deer through a fresh dusting of snow. Surprised, the big man knelt on one knee and gently flicked the snow off the tender needles of a small tree. He examined the nearby landscape and saw that it was the only one of its kind around. The young evergreen was a foot in height and tucked between oak and maple saplings. Several of the saplings had been ruined. Their broken branches and skinned trunks were victims of the seasonal ritual of antler care.

One day Samuel took the young boy to the secluded valley where the tree had taken root.

Thomas rubbed the tender needles of the young tree as if it were a new pet. For a moment, the vision of the Earth being formed by great and caring hands played against the screen of his imagination. “You've always said that God leaves us little mysteries to ponder.”

Samuel explained that the little tree would need some help to survive.

Now the sun and the rain and the seasons will do their part in the upbringing of this tree. But you would need to keep an eye on it and protect it. There will be droughts to make it thirsty, and snow and ice to bend and break its young branches. The bucks will threaten its youth. And the lightning – well, you just always have to pray that it will be spared from that.

Young Thomas took an oath as a “true knight of nature” to tend the tree.

When Thomas finished his oath, Samuel touched the boy's small shoulders with the hemlock branch and said, “I dub you Sir Thomas Elery, The Keeper of the Tree.”

Through the years of drought and flood, snow and ice, Thomas kept his vow.

“When we got all that snow last winter, I came up here and shook it off the limbs,” Thomas was proud of what he had done. It was in his voice. “That ice storm back in February sure did sit heavy on its branches. I was thinking about building little fires around it to melt it off, but then on the second day the sun came out, and the ice melted away.” Samuel looked up from his carving. “It'll hold its own with nature, as long as it gets a good start. And I think you are seeing to that, all right.”

“I wanted to express how this family was so connected, not only with each other, but with nature and the tree,” Wood noted. “Thomas could relate his family to this tree all along – he saw it grow into a majestic tree in his lifetime.”

This, of course, was a direct result of the Keeper of the Tree keeping the oath he made so many years before.

“Thomas took care of the tree all along,” Wood added.

The author related a personal story that influenced this part of the storyline.

“Some years ago I found a magnolia seedling in the forest,” he said. “I had every intention of moving that tree. I was going to let the seedling get a little larger first. For three years I let it grow. I actually picked the day to go and get it, and a deer had broken it. I had waited too long.”

The underlying theme of the Keeper of the Tree, the connection between man and nature, is brought home when Samuel carves a small wooden heart from a pine knot and gives it to Thomas.

Samuel placed the wooden heart back into the palm of Thomas's hand He closed the boys' fingers around it. “The tree is a gift to your heart, Thomas. Just as nature is a gift to man. Listen, and one day, the tree will speak to you. Its voice will not be like that of a man. It will be gentle and quiet, like the wind that lifts the oak leaf. Leave your heart open to it and, someday, no matter where you are, you will hear it and understand.”

“People today are so detached from nature,” the author stated. “I think nature has a language all its own. If you're stressed after a day at work a walk in the woods is calming.”

For some, the author speculated, The Keeper of the Tree could provide that walk in the woods.

Reader response so far has been positive.

“Some readers have told me they can relate it to a certain tree on their property or something like that,” Wood said. “Others have said it makes them stop and think about nature. I like that.”

“I wanted this book to be a simple ode to nature,” the author concluded. “This story is the result of someone who actually sat down and listened to nature.”

Francis Wood will be at the Farmville Christmas Show this Saturday, Nov. 6, at the STEPS facility in Farmville.