Finals begin tomorrow. The emails should begin any moment now. The grading continues apace. Every time I feel like I have my arms around it, I find a new thing to look at. So I grade some more. Then I’m done. And then a late assignment rolls in.

Which will allow me to move effortlessly into the deadline talk as the big, final, speech of the class. Everyone will love that.

Something else just popped up for me to assess.

None of this is hard, mind you. It’s part of the job. It’s a bit like laundry, though: you’re never done, not really. All day long like this, and yesterday and most of Monday, too.

Oh, here’s two more things in the ol’ inbox now.

It was three degrees warmer today. The thermometer said 47, but the wind chill held things down to an uncomfortable 39 degrees. I went out for a bike ride at the warmest least cold part of the day. I quickly realized I was under-dressed. Wrong jacket. Also, I forgot the ear muffs. But my hands and toes stayed comfortable.

The wind was everywhere, and that’s what we’re blaming the whole thing on. It wasn’t that my legs were bad, it is that there was a headwind in every direction. I rode a big rectangle, so I rode in every direction, and there was always the wind.

And the close passers. Drivers were brutal today.

All of it was enough to make me cut the ride short. But I got in 20 miles, and I was able to see this, whatever it is.

There are fresh produce stands all over around here. They’re all empty now, of course. Some of the smaller ones got rolled away from the road at the end of the season, but most seem like semi-permanent fixtures. So, too, are a few of the homemade-built bus stands. I’ve found no little libraries, as yet, and I don’t know what’s happening here at Cedar Lane Junction. Maybe it’s a mini-pharmacy, or a bait shop, or both. I do know, from archival map photos, that sign has been slowing peeling away for a little more than a decade now.

Sometimes you see a stand of trees and wonder if they were left there, or planted there. Someone had a room with windows to the east of these trees and they knew there would come a day when they’d get tired of sunsets. Serious astrophysical prescience.

That’s a simple stand of two rows of trees. They are bracketed on each side by houses. And, no, that UAP to the right of the sun is not a Photoshop artifact. It’s in the raw photo, a lens flare within a series of them. That’s just going to happen when you’re shooting from the hip.

Anyway, I liked where the sun was and how the clouds were lined up, and I began to wonder about the chance nature of trees on old farmland.

A century ago this land was owned by a couple named Campbell. Asbury’s family could trace it’s roots back to the colonial era, right here in this community. Alice was the granddaughter of Irish immigrants. I wonder if they ever stood around that spot and stared off that way. I wonder what they dreamed about. The man died in 1992, not far away from here. She died in 1999. It looks like he served in World War I, but that’s a rabbit hole I’m saving for a different day.

I infer from the dusty old records that they sold the land in the 1930s, an all too common tale of the era, I’m sure.

Let’s go back even farther, though.

This is the 20th installment of We Learn Wednesdays. I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Including today’s installment, we’ll have seen 38 of the markers in the Historical Marker Database. And this one is pointing to one of the older moments the county recognizes. It’s colonial-era, even.

The fabled oak the sign references was about a quarter-of-a-mile away. It fell to the ground in 2019, having cast cool shade on man and beast for an estimated 600 years. That was the spot, according to the legend, where the original Quakers signed a treaty with the indigenous residents. That tree was in my grade school books. Probably yours too! Probably because it was one of the rare treaties with native populations that was honored. Beneath that tree was where the earliest white residents were buried. Indeed, Betsy Ross’ father, a third-generation immigrant from Wales, a man named Samuel Griscom, was buried there. He owned a lumberyard and was a master carpenter. (He helped build the bell tower at Independence Hall!)

Every town in the state, 565 of them, was given a seedling from the Salem Oak after it fell. (A follow-up story will soon be demanded.) Other groups of Quakers got still more seedlings for replanting at their meeting houses. This group, the Salem Friends, apparently maintained ownership of the tree and they were giving away leaves and small bits of the tree as keepsakes.

I’m glad I wasn’t here for that. I would have wanted a piece. Perhaps I would have gotten one. And then there would eventually be the desire to make something interesting with it. And great pains would be required to be sure it was done correctly. The curse of a not at all accomplished confident or competent craftsman.

When someone uses the old blood and sweat expression, this is what I think of.

I bet old Samuel Griscom would have known what to do with it, but I digress.

They had a memorial service for the tree. One of the Friends wrote an obituary that summer:

The Salem Oak’s life span was double the 300-year average of most white oaks. In that time, she witnessed the clearing of her forest home and many other events that history has forgotten. She saw Lenni Lenape, early Quakers, European settlers, free African Americans, and their descendants, grow, build, and gather around her. She watched as Revolutionary War soldiers marched through her peaceful town. She impressed Charles Lindbergh with her fall foliage as he flew over Salem on Oct. 21, 1927, on his way from Atlantic City to Wilmington, in celebration of his solo trip across the Atlantic Ocean. She saw travelers and shipments of goods arriving at the Salem port down the street, and witnessed the birth of industry in Salem, as a huge bottling plant was built behind her.

The mighty Oak watched generations bid farewell to their loved ones as they were laid to rest around her. She offered silent comfort to those who came to visit their deceased friends and family, embracing them with the shelter and cool shade of her vast canopy. She offered a peaceful place for sunrise services, social gatherings, and quiet reflection. She enticed hundreds of children to try to stretch their arms around her massive trunk and provided them with a giant prop to run around and hide behind while playing. And she inspired local artists to try to capture her beauty, her significance, her peacefulness, her impressive stature, and her sheer awesomeness, in every medium.

In 2000, she was bestowed the honor of being named a Millennial Landmark Tree, through the America the Beautiful Fund. This recognized her as one of the top 50 trees in the country with historical significance. In 2016, she was declared the largest White Oak in New Jersey by the Department of Environmental Protection. At that time, she towered 103 feet tall, with a circumference of 22 feet, 4 inches. She had a crown fit for royalty, spanning 104 feet.

It’s easy to see why people are romantic about trees.

In the middle of that oak’s life, all of the land around it was a proprietorship. The Quakers owned it for about 30 years, having purchased it from Sir George Carteret, who was strapped for cash in the 1670s. (And weren’t we all?) In 1702 it returned back to Queen Anne, as a colony. That’s an entirely different saga.

You wonder how that sort of thing weighed on the people who walked into this building during that time. These walls would look familiar to them, but so much that they would see from the doorway, today, would surely be a shock.

These were the people that sailed to the New World to find some freedom, so perhaps they would be pleased that their religious descendants are still here.

In next week’s installment of We Learn Wednesday, we’ll take a glance at a 19th century home and store. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.