An Acorn Cap

I’ve lived with a more-than-200-year-old red oak tree in my back yard for two decades. Every other year it drops a lot of acorns, so it’s not as though I never noticed them before.

But today I came across one of the caps, without its nut, and couldn’t stop looking at it.


What a transcendently beautiful object: the radial symmetry of the outside, with its tightly layered, shingle-like texture; the wooden bowl-like inside; the strong impression that it is made of wood, when just a few months ago it was green and soft.


Obviously, I don’t have the words for what I felt when I finally saw this acorn cap. They slipped away before I could get indoors to write anything down.

But it was nice to spend time thinking about this bit of our exquisite world, instead of the many instances of human-made destruction in our current era.