The Oak Trees
Molly Backes, Communications Coordinator
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few weeks ago, I found Mary Jane Hamilton’s 1991 book The Meeting House: Heritage and Vision on the extensive shelves at my parents’ house. It is an oddly-shaped book, longer than it is tall, with a folded cardstock cover the color of a paper grocery bag. Flipping through it, I looked at familiar images from FUS’s history: site plans, construction of the iconic prow, a group of men standing around a shovel at the ground-breaking ceremony, a group of women holding up the curtain they’d woven for the Hearth Room—the same curtain that now hangs in a glass case outside my office. There are pictures of the Stonehaulers—the women and men who helped transport a thousand tons of dolomite rock from a quarry outside Sauk City to our site in Shorewood Hills over the course of many weekends in 1949 and 1950. In the story of our congregation, we honor the Stonehaulers as our forebears, the people who with their own hands and determination built this church. In his 1947 design for FUS, Frank Lloyd Wright called it “A Country Church for the Madison Unitarians.” Back then, this spot—now solidly in the middle of the city—was a rural suburb. Early visitors to the Meeting House report being able to see all the way to Lake Mendota. Hamilton writes: “In keeping with his vision of a rural church, Wright sought to preserve a nearby grove of oak trees where he hoped the parishioners would picnic after Sunday services, as he had in his youth with the Lloyd Jones family [...] near Spring Green.” Though I’ve long been familiar with Wright’s philosophy of organic architecture and site-based design, this was the first time I’d encountered the
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idea that Wright specifically identified our oak trees as a part of his overall vision for the Meeting House.
Meeting House with oak trees, ca. 1951
Growing up at FUS, I loved our oak trees. In my CRE class called “Religion Without Walls,” our teacher and resident ecologist Brent Haglund encouraged us each to find our own sacred spot somewhere on campus; mine was in the wide, low branch of one of the old oaks north of the Loggia. (Recently Brent told me that some of the lower branches of the oaks needed to be cut down in the 90s because they “were killed by kids climbing on them,” and I had to confess that I was one of those kids!) In my family, my dad was the UU who brought us to church on Sundays, and my mom was a recovering Catholic who said that the only church she believed in was nature. Climbing into the oak tree and settling myself against its sturdy trunk, listening to the leaves whisper against each other while the adults were still inside the Landmark, I discovered a way to unite my parents’ theologies: I could be at church and in nature at the same time. (con’t on page 11)
of FUS and emotional labor. Our oaks connect us not just to the ancient generations of ancestors who According to the nature writer Margaret Roach, held such trees sacred but also to the more reoak trees “support more life-forms than any other cent generations of FUS members who loved North American tree genus, providing food, pro- and cared for these trees, specifically. tection or both for birds to bears, as well as countless insects and spiders, among the enormous As the stewards of an iconic architectural landdiversity of species.” A keystone species, oaks are mark, we can sometimes get bogged down in the glue that holds an entire ecosystem together. the Frank Lloyd Wright of it all. We are a dynamic You could also say that they hold the land itself community—living, growing, exploring, changtogether—their large root systems help to keep ing, gorgeously imperfect and human—that the soil in place, increasing rainwater absorption dwells in a building which can sometimes feel and preventing erosion. In this season of drought, more like a museum than a home. The story of the wide canopy of our oaks has provided relief the Stonehaulers is important because it reminds from the scorching sun for the plants and animals us that though this place represents the unique beneath them. While most of the grass on our vision of one man, it also embodies the love and campus is as yellow and dry as straw, the growth labor of the community members who built it. under the oaks is still green. In the decades since, we have used the term to remind ourselves, too, of the love and labor Oak trees have been sacred to people in cultures it takes not only to build a church but to keep across the world for millennia. In many traditions, it going and thriving. In my book, every person oak trees are also significant meeting places— who has tended to our land over the last 75 years sites of holy rites and rituals, gathering places is a Stonehauler, too. for community meetings and celebrations, landmarks for travelers. When our congregation de- Brent Haglund calls the four oldest oaks on our cided to build our Meeting House alongside an campus the “Signature Oaks.” They are the oldest oak grove, we joined an ancient tradition that members of our community, witnesses to this countless numbers of our ancestors observed place long before we showed up. Oak trees can before us, a tradition that may be as old as hu- live for hundreds of years, so with any luck, they manity itself: gathering in community under the will stand witness long after we’re gone. It’s hard oak trees to celebrate and wonder and mourn to imagine what the world might look like in the and grow together. future, but the oaks, with their slow growth and long timelines, help me to see what it could be. Researching our oak trees took me into the FUS The people caring for our trees 75 years from archives, where I found an entire box of minutes, now haven’t been born yet, but they will be conmemos, invoices, and letters from the members nected to us, just as we are connected to those of the Grounds and Landscaping Committee(s), who came before us. The oak trees—beloved elrepresenting nearly 75 years of work. As I flipped ders, sacred meeting place—will make family of through the documents, I found myself unex- us all. ◊ pectedly moved by how much people have invested in the care of our land—not just their time and money, but their physical and intellectual (con’t from page 10)
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