C.A.T., a new theory with deep roots

 

There is a theory; a popular theory; in casual discussions. It’s called The Acorn Theory. Rather Jungian, rather Adlerian. It states that one’s overarching identity – manifest in theory by a great oak tree – is present at inception, within the nascent acorn. The acorn knows it will grow into an oak. The Sigma and Omega are in the Alpha.

When I was very, very young I was prescient in negative space, in a brooding, moody way. As in, I knew I was not going to be a sequoia or palm tree or eucalyptus. You just knew. I knew by the age of ten that I would never get married; that I would probably never have a son. I knew I would never be as great as my grandfather or father. These things I knew. I saw them clearly. I was farsighted about that.

Sometimes things we thought we could foresee of ourselves proved wrong over the great periods of time. Consider these missteps to be twigs or branches breaking off from the oak tree in the wind or hail.

A very few things when I was a boy were very clear to me, and if I had known the words ‘presentiment’ or ‘presage’ I might have used them because these things I knew: I would be an artist. I would be a fly-fisherman. I would be a trout fisherman. I would be alone. I would read.

It needs to be said that for prophesies to come true, for the oak tree to grow tall and strong and heavy-laden, commitment is required from the acorn and seedling and sapling. Call mine the Committed Acorn Theory.

To my most prescient sense of identity, my committed acorn:

I was thinking yesterday about my senior year in high school, when I registered for Typing II and III with Mr. Gilbertson. I was with 30 sophomore girls all dedicated and on track to being secretaries. And me, 17 and 18 and a senior.

Intending (from Day One) to be a writer. To learn my tools.

I remember I sat in the front row. Behind me was Lisa H, a sophomore, and she was very respectful of me, although I was too shy to ever say anything. But when Mr. Gilbertson passed out a template or a manuscript or an envelope to type out or again or up, he would come to the head of the rows and pass out materials for the rows, for me and mine six items, and I would pass back to Lisa. Because of the size of the desks and spacing and size of the old typewriters, I’d have to sort of get up and turn around and bashfully hand back the materials to Lisa. And she would say, “Thanks,” which is a very big step for adolescents where I came from. So, she treated me respectfully. She didn’t treat me like I was strange for being a boy who wanted to learn to type, or a boy in a classroom of girls, or a boy who wanted to be a writer. I’m sure she thought I was strange. But she didn’t treat me like I was strange. And I didn’t know, and I don’t know which one – the thinking or the treating – hurts more in the longest run.

Typing class was just a stage in becoming a writer. I had recently taken up a more grueling stage: reading the classics, with which I began with Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique and Chuang Tzu and Lao-tse.

But it was long, long years before that when I knew I would be a writer. Those long childhood years that do not fly by, but swim by. Ten years before when I was truly a boy and when I was reading Walt Morey (Gentle Ben), Jim Kjelgaard (Big Red), Stephen W Meader (Trap-Lines North) and Wilson Rawls (Where the Red Fern Grows).

When I was a sapling bur oak growing from an acorn in better soil than most, more rocky than others, crowded by a canopy of Dutch elms and white spruce and green ash and silver maples and great, strong white oaks, I was a shy boy reading about boys and dogs and just lazily growing.

So here I am.

The sun was low and bright across the valley, and I had to both squint and pull my bill down. The new cold powder was four inches and the snowshoes flattened it and I trudged then on top of the older, thick crusted snow underneath. There was a steep slope down into the basin, and at the top of the slope I could sit on the tails of the snowshoes and slide down, but I stopped sliding from friction midway down, so I had to stand up and lean forward and run down on the snowshoes wild-like the rest of the way to the open stand at the base. And I stopped my momentum with a black ash trunk. Then I went out through the naked, cold ashes to the stream, where the stream was frozen over and white, with good-sized snow drifts, and there was nothing to be seen in the afternoon brightness but the whiteness and two dogs struggling through the deep powder on the frozen stream, working in the upstream direction and sniffing. But there was nothing to smell. Though that didn’t stop them from struggling. Nor running, nor sniffing.