St. Oak Tree

I’ve lost a friend recently. He was, perhaps, more than that – a distant
relative from an extended family dating from ... well, his whose date
of birth was not known exactly, not even the exact century; he was
born more than 600 years ago, it was estimated. He My friend was an
oak tree. A wonder. He did which did not deserve such an ignorant,
and heartless end.
It was thought that he came to life during the time of the Nemanjic
dynasty, springing up from an acorn on a hill slope, at the entrance to
the Savinac village valley, near Takovo. People did not bother to chris-
ten him, if there were any Christians around at that the time.
Rooted in good soil and nourished by the sun, my friend, the oak,
grew strong and tall. The legend says that wandering through Savinac,
Saint Sava rested for a while under his shade before inserting a cross
in his trunk to make him into a zapis, or sacred tree. Once each a year,
during the feast of Litije, the villagers would come out to him to chant,
and celebrateing in the green fields around him, amidst spring flowers
and the flowering of hope, for a fruitful year. The louder the voices of
worshippers, the bigger would be the crops to come would be.
I was told all this as a child, and when I grew up I read that it must
have beenhad been like that ever since Poseidon rose from the sea and
swung his trident, – even before they put a man called Jesus on a cross.
By then, I’d already moved away from the village. Like our my en-
tirewhole generation, I was told that the future lay in the city town
– that peasants must had to leave the land and move into towns to
become proletarians as Karl Marx recommended preached. The state’s
authorities mistrusted people on the land. Those who did not move to
towns were rounded up and jailed for being “rebellious”.
The Zapis Oak stayed in my memory, just as a dog remembers his
old master. Even when I drifted off, half a world away, to Arnhem Land
in Australia. There, the Swiss Aluminium Corporation built a large
aluminium plant at Melville Bay. To set Swiss Aluminium Corpora-
tion, a this new industrial complex in the virgin jungle at Melville Bay,
a large Banyan tree had to be bulldozered. As Tthe local Aboriginal
tribesmen lifted their spears in defence of the tree – and I remembered
my old friend, the Zapis Oak, back in distant Serbia.
The old Banyan had been sacred to the tribe since time immemor-
ial, perhaps more than 70.000 years, helping them to survive calam-
ities of the Ice Age. Faced with the protestes Because of the protest, the
workers at the building sites laid down their tools and building experts
flew back to Switzerland to work on a new design for the Aluminium
plant that would allow the sacred Banyan to stay. While the experts
were away, 2,000 workers at Melville Bay awaited their return without
going to work. When the work resumed again, a board was hung on
the tree reading, “Sacred, Do Not Disturb.” I took photographs of the
Banyan I took it, that which are now in [my] Totem and Ore collection
at Melbourne’s Victoria Museum.
From Arnhem Land, I went back to Takovo to see the Zapis Oak
in Savinac. The great old tree was still there, cropping several hundred
kilos of acorns every year. That crop could annually make barrels of oil
for the 20x20 land on which the tree growshads been growing. In the
past centuries, such oak trees like that were common throughout local
villages, their acorns used to feed herds of pigs which local people ex-
ported for sale to the Pannonian plains, as far as Vienna. Acorns were
far more useful as feed than the food growing there. The villagers lived
on acorns, as well, after by keeping them in water for a while to extract
the nuts’ bitterness.
After visiting my old friend at Savinac I wrote a book, Raki. This
is a comparative to show describesing how people survived living
solely off the land – in Serbia and in Australia, whichand it received.
The book brought me good reviews and awards
But the oak tree in Savinac that had inspired me to write Raki
was cut down this year, on 26 June 2015, to be precise. The It took a
woodcutter with his chainsaw took about an hour to destroy a natural
treasure that had lived for over 600 years, producing each year food to
nourish generations of people. The woodcutter did this barbaric deed
upon the supremely ignorant order of Minister Zorana Mihailovic, an
economist with great responsibilities ... the Zapisc Oak was sacrificed
for a motor highway to Albaniа and Monten Negro.
In farewelling our friend, I write on behalf of all who mourn him
and the loss of civilized knowledge.