Plant a Tree

I love planting trees. I hate planting trees. But in the gray area I know the toil and hard work will pay off for generations to come. From sawtooth and chestnut oaks to apple trees, I’ve been a part of them all. Despite the perpetual back ache and blisters, it’s a long-term plan not only for the deer, turkey and other wildlife, but for young conservationists, the fruits of my own seeds, who will one day understand the benefit of planting a tree.

-Arthur Farrell, A Journal Entry

I can vividly remember the first time. I must have been 14 or 15 years old and my father had ordered some 500 sawtooth oaks to plant around our farm. “Be mature enough to drop acorns in 18 months,” he’d said, “we’d better get started.”

We’d only had Rocky Top for a year or two and I watched at a distance while my father learned to become a farmer of the weekend sorts. Of course, he had a job in town and I was forced to attend school as any youngster in modern America would. I still believe that the schoolhouse of life is a better proponent to my education, though I say this ultimately considering the idea that the spell cast by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn still remains.

The trees arrived bundled in large burlap sacks, probably 50 trees to a sack; each was soaked through with water and awash with wet mud—a messy job from the get-go. I don’t think my father ever set me down with a direct explanation as to why we would waste a good Saturday callusing our hands with a heavy spade, but I gradually became aware through stories of conservation and natural history to which this good deed would benefit the land. My parents were always good about that kind of thing—never forcing anything on me, but rather feeding me knowledge through stories in books and wildlife magazines.

I enjoyed the work and it was one of the first times I really started to notice the world around me. I can vividly see a thunderstorm rolling in from the west and feel the wind ahead of the pending thunder, lightning, and rain. Perhaps it was my heightened senses as an air of urgency to get the trees planted joined us before the first few drops spattered the earth. It was a cool, damp day already, and the soft ground parted easily with each thrust of the spade as we took turns digging and planting. I’d bet my father planted 10 trees to my two, and my mother followed behind making sure each sapling was sufficiently secure in its final resting place.

As the bottom fell out, I can remember retreating to our old blue GMC pickup truck, the three of us huddling on the bench seat in the cab, and feeling like I’d accomplished something. Even as a teenager I knew what we’d just done was an investment. As an adult, I realize the aesthetic enhancements it has created on our farm as the results come to life. I’d always heard that a deer loves a sawtooth acorn so much that it would get down on its knees and proceed to walk the distance from Washington to Georgia for one bite. A bit far-fetched indeed, but each fall there they are, beneath the ones that survived that initial planting.

It’s grand to discover the sawtooths that have made it. When you plant 500 trees around a large expanse, you tend to forget the exact whereabouts of each and every one. Some were choked out where others survived. Many were rubbed to nothing by young bucks, but some of those are the healthiest ones we have. In the spring, during turkey season, we’d walk the property line, barely noticing a dark gray and deeply furrowed bark on a medium-sized tree peering at us from inside a small thicket.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” my father would usually say, wiping the sweat off his brow like any farmer happening upon an unexpected discovery. We’d then quickly inspect the tree and be on our way.

I can’t say that my mind back then recognized the things in which I present them today. We’ve gone on to plant thousands of trees around our small farm and elsewhere. One thing about land is that they just ain’t making any more of it. Just think what you could do, as an outdoorsmen and a landowner, if you plant just a few trees a year—and who and what will benefit. That’s not asking much, but it sure is giving a lot.

Josh Wolfe

It didn’t take long for me, following in my father’s footsteps (literally), to develop a deep appreciation for the outdoors. Because it’s there in the wind, in the rain and a cool summer sunrise where I’ve learned more than in all the classrooms combined. My journalistic work is the sum of all I’ve taken from the outdoors and all I want to give back.

It was during a long, grueling two-year stint working as a banker in Huntsville, Alabama, I finally realized I needed to follow my dreams. After sojourning several places across the country, I now call Asheville, North Carolina, home, where I am the co-founder, publisher and editor of The Golf Sport (www.golfsportmag.com) magazine and editor of Sporting Classics Daily (www.sportingclassicsdaily.com). I am also a contributor to OutdoorHub and Global Outfitters, and hope to really inflate that balloon over the next couple years.

For me, it’s the power of the pen that makes the outdoor adventure live forever – as it is resurrected on the page in front of me. I am so fortunate to be a part of the outdoor community and make my passion a career.