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 The
huge, three hundred-year-old Burr Oak "Signal Tree" located in the
Cuyahoga River Valley on the North edge of Akron, Ohio is a charming legacy of
the native people who once inhabited the hills of Eastern Ohio and Western
Pennsylvania.
The Signal Tree is located near a minor continental divide. Water south of
Akron flows to the Ohio River via the Tuscawaras and Mohican Rivers. Water
north of Akron flows into the Cuyahoga River which then empties into Lake Erie
at Cleveland. The name “Akron” comes from the same Greek word as Acropolis
meaning “high place.” Both the city and the tree are in Summit County.
Native Americans and early
settlers paddled canoes up the crooked river (the “Cuyahoga”) from Lake Erie,
roughly a forty mile journey, to the spot where this uniquely shaped
three-trunked tree signaled them to land and portage the few miles to the
Tuscawaras River.
We chose The Signal Tree as our symbol due to its steady strength, grace and
reliable guidance and frankly because it is not possible to stand near this
magnificent old being without feeling something profoundly inexpressible.
The use of signal trees was not exclusive to Native American cultures. There
are signal trees around the world. The following poem describes one in Wales:
But hush! the upland
hath a sudden loss
Of quiet!--Look, adown the dusk hill-side,
A troop of Oxford hunters going home,
As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!
From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come.
Quick! let me fly, and cross
Into yon farther field!--'Tis done; and see,
Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorify
The orange and pale violet evening-sky,
Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree!
I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,
The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,
The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,
And in the scatter'd farms the lights come out.
I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,
Yet, happy omen, hail!
Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale
(For there thine earth forgetting eyelids keep
The morningless and unawakening sleep
Under the flowery oleanders pale),
Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!--
Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,
Wandering with the great Mother's train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)
Within a folding of the Apennine,
-- Matthew Arnold (1861)
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