Sorin Oak

There are only two words that can accurately depict the suffering through which Austin’s weather has currently endured: cold and rainy. Today, the high was only thirty six degrees and yesterday it was misting all day. I left the Midwest and came to the South the find heat and right now it is nowhere to be found. Then again, it is so bizarre how Austin can be thirty six degrees on a Monday and by Sunday temperature reaching seventy degrees. I spent most of this month journaling on one of the benches by Sorin Oak on campus. The tree is unlike anything I have ever seen before. The only way to describe it to other people is to refer to is as “massive.” When my family came to visit a few weekends ago, my uncle, who is a photographer, was so determined to take as many pictures of the extensive oak as he could. We noticed that there is actually a wire that holds one of the branches up. The wire is evidence of how old the tree actually is. In the Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, in the February entry, he comes across an oak as well. He writes, “It shows 80 rings, hence the seedling from which it originated must have laid its first ring of wood in 1865, at the end of the Civil War” (6). It is amazing to think that a monstrous tree can be broken down into individual rings that have multiplied over an extensive period of time. It is also amazing how different the setting looks when it is sunny and when it is rainy (I attached two pictures as visuals).

When it was sunny, I could feel the warmth creeping up my back as I sat embracing the light breeze on my face. I heard little birds chirping but was unable to identify what species. While I was writing, a heard a rustling above my head. I look up only to find a squirrel creeping down the branch right in front of me. I could not believe that he was comfortable enough getting that close to me. The squirrels back in Wisconsin are much larger and are not nearly as friendly. They have a tendency to eat copious amounts of bird food set out by people around the neighborhood. I assume the squirrel was just looking for food and he was not going to let a human stand in the way. Furthermore, one of the campus cats ended up quietly slinking up next to my legs. I immediately thought about the wild vs. domestic relationship. Here is this squirrel that roams freely and the cat does too… but is the cat really free? It is so often a domesticated animal, which is not always a bad thing. I have heard that the university provides it with food and water.

When it was rainy and cloudy, I did not spend much time near the tree. No animals seemed to be in sight and everything just seemed unusually quiet. It was like that uncomfortable feeling that comes before a big storm hits, except the storm never came. There were not squirrels that day nor the cat.

In relation to weather, I took the time to rate myself on a scale of 1-10 (10 being super stressed) depicting my stress level on any given day. It was interesting to find that lo and behold, on days that it was cloudy and gloomy, I was much more stressed out. My stress levels on those days were anywhere from 7-9. There is just something about the sun that makes my day so much better. The sun reminds me of happiness and all the good things in life, and therefore, I do not feel the need to worry about the little things. Not to mention, the sun provides my body with some hardy Vitamin D, which is another bonus.