About 12,000 years ago, as the last ice sheets retreated from McHenry County, small animals like squirrels and blue jays moved back into the area, bringing with them nuts from the trees that survived further to the south. This area was recolonized with hickories, oaks, and even hazelnuts that were carried - and buried – by these small critters.Other plants could be spread into the area by the wind, but these trees with heavy nuts and acorns needed assistance to make the trip northward.
In the years that ensued, this area experienced a 3,000 year long drought where fires raged across the landscape, shaping the character of the plants that would one day form the prairies and oak woodlands that native American people found in McHenry County.
The bur oak, with its spreading crown, and its cork-like bark thrived in this fire-tested landscape, while species like the shagbark hickory, white oak and red oak managed to survive in wooded areas more removed from the open prairies – areas where the regular prairie fires did not penetrate.
Fast forward to 1837, when the area we call McHenry County was officially surveyed by the US Government to ready the area for settlement. At that time, the men conducting the public land survey found a landscape that was about one-third covered with oaks.
Oaks & hickories. Not maples. Not ash trees. Not pines or cedars or firs, but 98% oaks & hickories.
We have the surveyors’ written records – at every section corner, at every quarter section point as they measured their way across the land, they noted in their journals the plants that they found, including the trees that were nearest to the corner point. If a tree was very near the corner, they would often mark that tree with a gash as a “Witness Tree.” There is one of these trees still living south of Marengo. There may be others!
The majority of the oaks were bur oaks.
Picture the squirrel with his cheeks full of acorns or hazelnuts, digging small holes to bury his cache for the winter. Is it any wonder he forgot some of the nuts and they grew up into trees and bushes?
Fast forward again to today. Nearly 90% of our oak woods are gone. Farming, development, and most recently age and invasive species have impacted these once extensive groves of oak trees.
So what? A tree is a tree, right? The squirrels seem to be doing okay! Isn’t there something more important to worry about than some trees?
A friend shared an experience with me the other day: she was driving through a small town in the county, past a house where a large oak tree was being cut down. She stopped to ask the homeowners what was wrong with the tree. Their reply: “Oh, nothing, but it was messy – all those leaves and nuts every fall – we just didn’t like having it in the yard.” She asked their permission to count the tree rings and found 125 rings, meaning 125 years old. More years of life than the two homeowners’ combined. The tree was there before their home was built, before they were born – before their parents were born. And in one moment, that 125 year-old, healthy life was extinguished.
So what? Well, to put it into terms even the coldest among us can relate to, a mature street tree adds $2,000-5,000 to the market value of a home. A tree located on the south side of a home (which this old tree was) will provide shade that cuts cooling costs by 20% or more, and will provide shelter from winter winds, thus reducing the winter heating bill as well.
This story plays out every day in the county, whether one homeowner choosing to remove an oak tree, or a developer destroying hundreds because it is harder to build those cookie-cutter homes if you have to work around some pesky trees.
Now, I’m not telling you this story to get you depressed, but rather to get you to think. To think about how this story of the oaks in McHenry County has something to teach us about the work of our church and the legacy that each one of us will leave behind.
What do we do? Maybe we speak up at a City council meeting to ask our elected officials to do a better job of preserving the oaks that are our legacy. Or maybe we plant an oak tree.
