September 16

It’s one thing to get caught underneath the black oaks unaware as the acorns drop, though they do sting a little. It’s quite another to be near a hickory tree when they let go.

There are a couple of shagbarks in the lower woods near the vernal pool beside Asnebumskit Pond. They are fairly majestic looking, with steel-gray bark on big trunks that rise 70 or so feet into the air; the bark has the characteristic look of peeling, much in the same manner that shake roofs tend to gray and curl as they age.

Around the base of each are strewn the open husks of the hickory nuts, evidently having either been opened from above by the squirrels (who then cast the outer casings aside) or been dropped to the ground and managed from below. It’s a dangerous business standing beneath these trees just now. The squirrels are up high foraging, and sure enough nuts of both types, opened and whole, come crashing down.

Whole hickory nuts are golf ball sized if not larger, and they would give a memorable knock on the noggin if the unfortunate were to occur. Their odor is pleasing, though decidedly piney and acidic, much in the way that black walnuts have a distinctive smell.

Our Michigan farm was called Hickory Ridge, for it was situated on the top of a plateau, the edge of which had nearly a half dozen old and large shagbark hickory trees, likely planted intentionally as a ridge line in the early 1930s.

These hickories were only a dozen yards from the house, and we enjoyed all manner of forest birds and beasts who made use of them. Particularly wonderful were the families of flying squirrels who made their nests in the boughs; we’d see them at nighttime, scurrying among the branches and occasionally taking flight from one tree to another.