Seeds

One Man's Serendipitous Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired Famous American Writers from Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty to Wharton

Richard Horan

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780061861680
• eBook ISBN: 9780062079152
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Biological Sciences

"Seeds reads like the best of a roundtable discussion amongst John Muir, Bill Bryson, and David Sedaris. From the fields of Gettysburg to the home of Kerouac, Horan takes an unlikely premise and weaves it into a story that's poignant, insightful and unexpectedly humorous. This is more than a book about seeds—it's about literary heroes, forensic forestry, and self-discovery." —Spike Carlsen, author of A Splintered History of Wood

The Orchid Thief meets Botany of Desire meets Driving Einstein's Brain in Richard Horan's Seeds, the chronicle of one man's quest to understand the influence and impact of trees in American life and literature—and his mission to collect seeds from the homes of Kerouac, Welty, Wharton, Kesey and twenty other authors, to preserve the literary legacy of American forests for generations to come.

Part One

Germination

There he began thrusting his iron rod into the earth, making a hole in which he planted an acorn; then he refilled the hole. He was planting oak trees. I asked him if the land belonged to him. He answered no. Did he know whose it was? He did not. He supposed it was community property, or perhaps belonged to people who cared nothing about it. He was not interested in finding out whose it was. He planted his hundred acorns with the greatest care.

—JEAN GIONO, THE MAN WHO PLANTED TREES

Lincoln, Twain, Presley, and Faulkner

DURING THE SPRING BREAK OF 2001, my wife, our two daughters, and I went on a vacation to the Gulf of Mexico. Destination: Dauphin Island, Alabama. We drove from our home in Wisconsin, covering more than a thousand miles of interstates and back roads. To break up the drive, we put together an itinerary of historical places to visit along the way.

First stop: Springfield, Illinois, and Abraham Lincoln’s home. Originally just a cottage, the place was expanded by the Lincolns into a two-story, twelve-room house soon after they moved in. When we visited it, the saltbox colonial had an overabundance of creaking stairways, paisley wallpaper, crimson carpets, and primitive-looking furniture. And it smelled funny.

My youngest daughter, just seven at the time, was dazzled by it. I felt it lacked all “freedom of interior and exterior occupation,” to borrow a phrase from Frank Lloyd Wright, but then again, the young Lincoln was not noted for his architectural contributions to the house, just his legendary prowess there with an adz.

In the living room, a photograph caught my eye: a picture taken in May of 1860 of Honest Abe standing out in front of the house next to a young basswood tree. Coincidentally, there was a fully mature basswood in that same spot just outside the window.

“Say, is that the same tree as the one in the photograph?” I blurted out.

“I believe it is,” the docent replied.

I felt a thrill run down my spine.

It was the perfect excuse to escape, so I left the family behind to continue the malodorous tour while I went outside to take a closer look at the ancient hardwood that had known Lincoln personally. There was nothing special about the tree—no patina-proud plaque pointing out its pedigree, no initials carved into the bark, no tattered rope swing. It looked like any other tree. On the ground and underfoot were scads of golden pea-size seeds. I don’t know what possessed me, but I reached down and picked up a handful and jammed them into my pockets.

This tree had known one of the greatest and most complex figures in American history. Had Lincoln even leaned against it and pondered his future? Surely he must’ve dreamed under that tree, dreamed of a better life for his family, for his fellow citizens, black and white. Suddenly those seeds in my pocket from that touchstone felt like pennies from heaven.

NEXT STOP: HANNIBAL, MISSOURI, on the western banks of the Mississippi River, just an hour and a half from Springfield. At Mark Twain’s childhood home, we were disappointed to learn that we had missed the last guided tour of the day. I searched the yard for old trees and seeds. Nothing. But Hannibal itself was old and seedy, surprisingly untransformed by its one-time resident’s fame. Later that evening, while my brood swam in the indoor pool at the hotel, I decided to have a look around town in the waning sunlight.

Because I have been a transient most of my life, I have a knack for bonding quickly with any given locale. I need only wander around a place for a little while to feel a keen sense of belonging. As a teacher, I’ve learned that someone’s environment has as much to tell us about that person as does his or her friends and family. So, within the hour, Ich bin ein Hannibaler.

I came to the base of Cardiff Hill, that illustrious playground of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. A rusty sign modestly boasted of the site’s place in literary history. As I made my way up the steep incline along a narrow dirt path, I half expected two waifs to come bouncing out of the bushes in rolled-up dungarees, wooden swords in hand, battling make-believe pirates.

Standing there atop the hill, looking down at the broad, muscular river below, I suddenly realized I was breathing in Twain. In that sublime vista drenched in the heavy, ionized air of the river valley, his worldview revealed itself to me in one wet respiration. A crow called out behind me as if to clear its throat. I turned to follow it and found myself gazing upon, for as far as the eye could see, a proud stand of hardwoods—locusts, box elders, elms, maples, oaks—running north to south along the ridge behind me. These were the offspring (there were no ancients among them) of trees that had once watched little snot-nosed Sam Clemens at play. This time I had a pouch strapped around my waist; rummaging around the area, I gathered up what seeds I could find and deposited them in it.

NEXT STOP: MEMPHIS. The magic of Graceland is not found in the memorabilia sold at the gift shop, or in the heady opulence of His private plane, or in the less-than-grand entrance to the ersatz plantation, or in the cheesy sixties décor, or in the “chicken-fried” trivia, or in the Safari Room, or in The Hall of Fame, or in the jumpsuit shrine, or even in the divine bathroom where he expired. No! The magic of Graceland is found in the people’s reaction to it.

So while my wife and kids listened to the guide, I people-watched behind dark sunglasses. In fact, I was so thoroughly entertained by the kaleidoscope of rapture that I’d almost forgotten about my new hobby: collecting seeds from the trees that once knew historically significant people. That is, until I found myself outside, between the Hall of Fame and the jumpsuit shrine. And there, on the lawn, scattered like tiny Elvis capes, was a sea of maple seeds. At first I was worried that the security folks might intervene, but no one paid me any mind as I knelt down and excitedly scooped up the little key-shaped pods and placed them in my pouch.

Sated, I wandered over to the line of people waiting for their turn to stand in front of the King’s grave. It was while standing in that line, fingering my waist pouch as if it were filled with gold doubloons, that I had my epiphany: I would travel across America to gather the seeds from the trees of great Americans who had influenced my life or influenced the course of American history.

I would visit their hometowns in search of the trees that may have played a part in their early development and helped form their views. I’d look into their lives and works for references to trees. I would also seek out trees that had witnessed great historical events.

The names came flooding in. First, the champions of nature: Thoreau and Emerson, Carson and Muir. Then the novelists whose words were succor to me, as a student and then a teacher: Kerouac, Wharton, Shirley Jackson, Henry Miller, Vonnegut. The great poets, too, and American places: Gettysburg, Mount Vernon, Wounded Knee. The deluge of names and places cascaded through my brain for some time before it ebbed to a trickle.

FINAL STOP: OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI. I don’t think there is a place on the surface of the planet that feels more uncomfortable to a native New Yorker than the Deep South. The air, the architecture, even the trees exude a sort of Yankee repellent. For some odd reason, it doesn’t work in reverse; that is, Southern boys such as Truman Capote, Willie Morris, and even the late, great New York City chronicler Joseph Mitchell, felt right at home in a Manhattan clam bar or on an East Hampton beach. I wonder why that is.

The city of Oxford is the quintessence of Southern gentility. At its center is a classic square around which sit antebellum structures made of fiery red brick trimmed out with white columns, iron-railed porches, and ornate roof moldings. We arrived, all of us jam-packed into a late-model Olds 88, during a torrential downpour. If the sun had been shining, I’m certain pedestrians would have halted in their tracks and kids at play in the square would have missed catching the ball as they all turned to watch the silver sedan with the Wisconsin license plates entering the scene.

Faulkner’s home, which he named Rowan Oak, wasn’t easy to find even with directions, but I spotted it at the end of a residential street: well hidden behind a thick grove of pines. There was a handwritten sign on the gate: “Closed for Repairs.” Hell, we’d driven sixty miles out of our way to get here; no stupid sign was going to keep me out. It was still raining, so my family happily stayed behind in the car with the radio on while I hopped the fence and entered the property.

It was spooky in there. The majestic plantation-style mansion, with its giant white columns and large shuttered windows, eyed me suspiciously as I diffidently approached. There was no one around. Everything was still. The ample yard and the numerous living quarters of the once un-free help were well maintained, but there was a tragic, severe feeling to the place. The trees completely surrounding the property had an immuring edge to them. Illness lingered. I could imagine Faulkner’s dark, rummy eyes watching my every move, his lips pursed around the mouthpiece of a bulbous-headed pipe, as I splashed around the outside of the house, peering in all the windows.

It had stopped raining and was misting; everything was steamy and gray and damp. My umbrella was of little use, so I pulled it closed and hung it from my belt. Completely drenched, my wet, tangled hair covering my face, I felt squalid. In a sudden act of exuberance, I sprinted across the lawn and did a feet-first slide up to the base of an old maple tree at the far end of the yard. And as I lay there, soaked head to toe and looking up into the matronly branches of the tree, my epiphany back at Graceland began to play through my head again: I would be sure to spend significant time on a Southern writers’ tour—Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, and Tennessee Williams—and wouldn’t miss a non-literary hero of mine, Muhammad Ali.

I could feel the girls’ impatience pulling me back through the dampness, so I gathered what maple seeds I could find and sprinted toward the car, vowing to revisit Faulkner.

I TOOK MY COLLECTION of famous tree seeds back to Wisconsin and planted them in our yard. A few sprouted, but most didn’t make it, and the rabbits ate those that did. I managed to salvage a few saplings, and gave them out as presents to friends and family. But that’s as far as it ever got.

A few more trips ensued: unplanned family events. A few years later, I visited Ellis Island for the first time. There stood ancient sycamores, still greeting all who stepped off the ferry. Imagine the millions who saw those trees at the start of their new lives? I collected pocketfuls of the seeds and stored them in my basement.

When my father passed away in the spring of 2005, I returned to my childhood neighborhood to drive by the house where I had grown up. I just wanted to make that connection before we put him into the ground. It was early spring, and the buds were beginning to bulge out on the trees. The blush of color to the scenery made everything look like a Seurat painting. Behind my old house, the tall, intertwining cherry trees from my youth were still there, but out in front, my great playmate, the red maple, was gone.

I drove down the block to the site of my elementary school. The building had been torn down decades before and turned into a small park, but behind it stood the same grove of hardwood trees I used to play among at recess. I parked the car and entered the four-acre woods. Nothing had changed but me. Standing there beholding the same wonderful trees of my childhood, I felt a glow of belonging, of embrace. I remained in those woods for a long time. When I returned to the car, my heart was full to overflowing with the seeds idea once again.

THAT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO. Since then, we’d moved from Wisconsin to upstate New York for my new teaching job. I compiled a list of dozens of great American writers whose homes I wanted to visit. Friends and colleagues, upon hearing of my idea, urged more names upon me, and I happily, if also anxiously, added them to my notebook. How would I possibly find the time to make these trips? No matter. I had to take action, to take the first step.

On an unseasonably warm day in March, I set out from my new home on the southern shores of Lake Ontario to collect seeds. Unlike John Chapman, a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed, I had no business plan and no gospel; and I would be taking seeds, not giving them. But like him, I was on a mission. I would start nearby and work my way out: short trips, then long trips out West, down South, and over to New England.

According to season and location, be it during summer vacations or on long weekends, I would go with family and friends or on my own. But bit by bit, I would gather the seeds, bring them home, and grow them, and then tell my family and friends the stories of the trees from which the seeds came and the lives and literature they touched.

L. Frank Baum

Northern red oak (Quercus rubra)

North Syracu...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Prologue
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Part Six
• Part Seven
• My Original List
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Other Books by Richard Horan
• Credits
• Cover
• Copyright
• About the Publisher