Beneath the Garry Oak

Surfing for more information or updated information about Garry Oaks in WA I came across this blog post dated in February of this year. I missed this and was really pleased to read about this effort underway by the WA State Senators Jacobsen and Kline.

What surprised me was this really neat poem that was written:

Beneath the Garry Oak
D. R. Thysell, January 21, 2004

From the Fraser through the Puget Trough and down Columbia way,
Up the Willamette, across the Rogue, around San Francisco Bay.
In seas of green were islands, of camas and crimson and gold.
This was the land of the Garry Oak, its story here is told.

Once, it wasn’t long ago, a very few hundred years.
Yes, once, up and down the coast, before the hungry pioneers.
In seas of green were islands, where salmon and oak did abound,
And meadows and savannahs and the baffling Mima mounds.

But we live our lives the best we can beneath the Garry Oak.
Day after swiftly changing day of questioning and hope.
The woodlands, once so plentiful, now fading into memory,
Living our lives the best we can beneath the Garry Oak.

From Victoria and the San Juan Isles to near Los Angeles.
Up and over the Cascade crest far from the ocean breeze.
In seas of green were islands, where kinsmen gathered, it seems.
Beneath and because of the Garry Oak, and salmon-filled emerald streams.

Not so very long ago the woodlands transformed.
Prairies to pasture, changes now faster than evolutionary norm.
In seas of green are islands invaded, engulfed, and ignored.
Beneath the oaks lies a challenging question: “Can they be restored?”

But we’ll live our lives the best we can beneath the Garry Oak.
Year after rapidly changing year of struggle and of hope.
The meadows hemmed with ancient oaks now vanishing beneath the sea
Of green, yet what of the acorn cache beneath the Garry Oak?

When western shores were settled, about ten thousand years ago.
The Garry Oak abided, where, exactly, we’ll probably never know.
In seas of green were islands that fire certainly spawned.
Flames on the prairies combating Doug-fir, oak’s long indispensable bond.

The oaks have stood the test of time till not so long ago.
Canopies that for centuries held wonders we’ll now never know.
If just one ancient oak could talk, what would it have to say?
Or should, instead, we question who would listen, here, today?
The oaks would surely ask us who would listen here, today.

But we’re living our lives the best we can beneath the Garry Oak.
Centuries and centuries of agonizing hope.
Barely free from ice’s grip, on gravelly plain and precipice.
Living its life the best it can: the stately Garry Oak.

From the Fraser through the Puget Trough and down Columbia Way.
And if just one ancient oak could talk, what would it have to say?
This is the land of the Garry Oak, its story now is told.

SB 5064

It has been said that the Garry Oak was so named after a man by the name of Nicolas Garry of the Hudson Bay Company around or between 1822-1835.