The Tree Speaks...

Wood storks perch in trees above a pond.

Whenever you hear of Oklahoma, what image first comes to mind? Dry? Desolate? The Dust Bowl? The setting where John Steinbeck begins The Grapes of Wrath? The barren land where The Trail of Tears ends?

Growing up in Texas, I so imagined the neighboring state to the north. My occasional trip to Oklahoma did little to dispel that limited view.

However, in recent years, several of our friends and family have talked enough about Beavers Bend State Park in the southeastern corner of Oklahoma to pique our interest. On our way home from Texas, we detoured north to visit this site established in 1937, one of Oklahoma’s first state parks. Encompassing over 7,000 acres, it is located on the Mountain Fork River in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains which spread into Arkansas.

Long before the forced exodus of Cherokee from the Atlantic shores to Oklahoma, the eastern part of that plains state was home to the Choctaw Nation. Excavation in the southeastern corner has produced evidence also of Quapaw, Osage, Shawnee, Comanche and Kiowa along with the Big Game Hunters dating back to 5000 B. C.

Like so many parks established in the 1930s across the country, today’s visitors to Beavers Bend can still see hand of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The workers constructed roads, cabins, campgrounds, residences and a bathhouse for the swimming area. The Works Progress Authority built a low-water dam across the river, creating a long, narrow lake called Broken Bow. Today, the park boasts of cabins, a lodge, four RV campgrounds along with four primitive campgrounds, two museums, and a golf course.

Besides the sheer beauty of this forested area and the high amount of rainfall which contradict all my biases about this state, situating two museums within a state park caught my attention. The first, a Nature Center, visitors would expect. Here naturalists rehabilitate abandoned or crippled wildlife which when healed are released back into the forests. We ended up at the Nature Center at the same time the Hugo Head Start group arrived. While we didn’t stay with this group, we sat on large rocks behind them when the rangers introduced some of the wildlife in their care. The children were fascinated by the owls, but some did not want the ranger to walk among their midst with the snakes. The few brave ones hesitantly accepted the invitation to touch one snake’s skin.

Of even greater interest to me was the Forest Heritage Center which winds itself through the woods. Greeting the visitor at the entrance is a tall totem image of a Native American carved from a massive tree. The octagon-shaped museum features 14 murals of forest scenes throughout the ages by Smokey the Bear illustrator Harry Rossoll. Also on display are a variety of tools used over the ages to turn this natural resource into the numerous products used by humans. In addition, the center serves as a gallery showcasing the works of wood artists from across the country. Here one can see a varied exhibit of wood sculptures and carvings, violins, vases, and furniture.

In the courtyard area encircled by the museum sits an amphitheater facing a newly erected, eight-foot bronze statue of the Pulaski Man. Although the statue which bears the name of a tool used by firefighters was commissioned in honor of an Oklahoma firefighter who died fighting wildfires in Wyoming, the statue stands to commemorate not only Jim Burnett, but also all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the wild land fire arena. At the dedication earlier this year, nearly 100 uniformed firefighters laid a pine leaf stem at the base of the statue in remembrance of their latest fallen comrade.

Sitting on a rough bench facing the statue still surrounded by dried pine stems tied in faded purple ribbon, I had to agree with forester Tom Smith who, in his dedication speech said, “Whether military people in Iraq, firemen and policemen at Ground Zero or a wild land firefighter on a lonesome mountain far from home, they have all served and put their lives at risk...Thank God, there are people willing to do that for us.”

Back inside the center, one plaque with a poem entitled “The Tree Speaks” by an anonymous author caught my attention. I was attempting to copy the words when a ranger passed and handed me a printed copy. It reads, “I am the heat of your hearth on cold winter nights; the cooling shade from the summer sun./ I am the paper that feeds the press, that makes the books for knowledge and history./ I can be a match stem or a ship’s mast/ I am the humblest cabin, and furnish the greatest mansion,/ I have served you from cradle to grave,/I can do no other. I am a gift from God, I am a friend of man, I am the tree!”

I came home and reread Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.

2003