red yellow green flame

red yellow green flame

leaves unfolding, lighting up

the mud dark creek

On a loamy walk through the low flats along Pilgrim Creek in April, I'm delighted by Buckeye leaves erupting from the tips of sprouts, twigs and trunks. It's incredible how so much matter is packed into such a tiny space. Where does it come from? Sap, taking on a myriad of forms.

All the scenes of the drama appear at once, often on the same plant, from encased leaf buds, to emerging leaflets, to blossom buds.

The buds poke up through their red-tipped yellow sheathes like candle flames. 

Over-wintering as tiny match heads.

Covered in tough, overlapping, pointed scales.

Then the leaflets pop up, like silk scarves out of a magician's sleeve.

Unfolding like the most intricate origami.

Some low-growing sprouts show evidence of being nipped off by deer, but the hardy plants just send new shoots off to the sides.

As the now-soft sheaths curl back and the corrugated leaflets unfurl, they flare into wild tassels of lime green . . .

Umber gold . . .

And burnt orange. 

Gradually spreading out into maroon five-fingered leaves that slowly turn green.

And then the final magic trick as the long panicles of yellow flower buds emerge amidst applause.

eye of the buck

   

 

eye of the buck

opening slowly from inside

its prickly pod

When I was growing up, we lived for some years in Ohio, the Buckeye State. The lawn behind our house sloped down to a woods that bordered old railroad tracks. A short walk down the tracks was the "bum's house," an abandoned concrete shell with empty windows, the walls covered with graffiti, and on the floor a blackened spot from cooking fires.
          We had our own fire pit in our little parcel of the woods, surrounded by logs for sitting around the fire at night, watching the orange sparks fly up from the flames to join the stars peaking through the tree canopy, roasting marshmallows for s'mores and telling tall tales. Sometimes we threw buckeyes in the fire, daring each other to eat the roasted nuts. We saw squirrels eating the raw nuts, but they knew how to chew through the pink outer layer, which is very bitter, to the white inner heart. Once, I tried doing what I heard that the Native Americans did, roasting, mashing and grinding the seeds into a meal which for porridge, but it was not very satisfying.
          During the afternoons and on weekends we ran around in our woods playing games. One of our favorites involved buckeyes. The equipment was simple, but took some time to construct. In early autumn, when the buckeye trees dropped their seed pods, the greenish-gold, leathery husks would split open, revealing one or sometimes two glossy, chestnut brown seeds with a pale circular "eye" that looks like the eye of a buck. Everyone carried a favorite buckeye for good luck, and just for the marvelous feel of the smooth orb. But for this game you searched for the biggest buckeye you could find, through which you drilled a hole and tied one end of a long string through the hole.
          The game consisted of two kids bashing their buckeyes together with the goal of breaking the other buckeye. If you did, you got to add that "coup" to your buckeye. If you broke a buckeye that already had a total coup of seven, then you got to add seven strikes to your buckeye. It took a good deal of mind-body coordination to get two flying objects to connect, and we learned from experience about momentum, velocity, vectors and what happens when two bodies collide. Sometimes the collision involved the other person's arm or hand, but that strike didn't count and could result in your friend holding a strike against you, which was another kind of lesson.
          I still like to collect buckeyes in the fall, but now I leave them in their shells and put them in a bowl on the dining table so I can watch the spiny husks slowly open like eyelids, revealing shiny dark brown eyes.

no longer hidden

no longer hidden

by leaves, spiny buckeye pods,

a paper wasp nest

On my way home from the mailbox at the highway, I stop to pick up some buckeye pods fallen on the gravel road. Only a scattering of russet five-fingered leaves and spiny pods remain on the nearly naked tree. Looking up, I spot a large gray object the size and shape of a head, hanging from a lower branch. It's a paper hornet nest. Just as I'm wondering if it's abandoned, I see hornets streaming in and out of a hole near the bottom of the nest. Through my zoom lens I can see the white face and the three white stripes on the tail that identifies them as bald-faced hornets, also called white-faced or white-tailed hornets. These are very aggressive insects, which will sting repeatedly if their nest is disturbed. A little scary, realizing how I've been traipsing for months past this nest, hidden by leaves not so very far above my head. I've already suffered an incredibly painful sting on the sole of my foot when I inadvertently stepped on a hornet this summer. Good thing I didn't try shaking the tree to knock down the buckeyes.