Arthur Corey owns a small house in Port Charlotte, Florida. It’s bright lemon yellow, with a lawn he’s trying to kill, and a carport with no car, where a glass table gathers bong ash in the shade of seagrapes.
Coccoloba uvifera is more closely related to grapes than he is, but less than oak trees are. It has thick, wide leaves and round, edible, purple fruit that grow in clusters. The Calusa, when this was their patch of sand, probably had a better name for them. Seagrapes are native to the Gulf Coast, and grow right up to the edge of the waves, where fiddler crabs duel in their roots.
These ones were little when Arthur planted them, just past his knees when they were in the ground. Now, they tower over the roof of the carport, keeping the glass table shady and cool while he eats cereal there in the morning. The lawn underneath them is never coming back, and it makes him smile to see brown leaves pile up, to hear anole lizards rustling between them.
Every time he walks his dog, he notes what’s growing in the neighbors’ yards. The soil is sand, just sand entirely, so he has to be strategic. Not just anything will replace the lawn he’s murdering.
Many of the neighbors have huge oak trees, Quercus virginiana, the live oak of the South, the state tree of Georgia, the magnificent wide shade tree that shelters Spanish moss and sparrows and a hundred other beings in its jungle branches. All acorns are edible if the tannins are soaked out, and Arthur heard a rumor the Calusa made an oil from them, and the young ones grow a starchy tuber in their roots sometimes. They are so well-adapted to the Gulf Coast that they increase the value of homes because they offer hurricane protection, in addition to shade. Arthur doesn’t know how old the ones in the neighborhood are, but many of them shade entire front yards. They live more than four hundred years.
He wants one. Right there, in the center of the lawn. He thinks about it constantly.
Rewilding a lawn in a FEMA flood zone is fatally optimistic. He knows this. Whatever tiny habitat he manages to recreate here has a lifespan precisely that of Thwaites Glacier.
Quercus virginiana has withstood millions of hurricanes, regrown after a hundred thousand fires, survived shipbuilding and suburbs and squirrels only to come out shining in the sun and bursting with acorns. It is a “species of least concern.”
But it is not a seagrape.
It is not a sea anything.
It will not grow at the edge of the waves.
It will not live for four hundred years in this yard. He’s certain of that.
Mostly certain.
His doubt is a Kantian doubt. What if everyone did what he’s doing? Kill their lawns, restore native ecosystems, get rid of their cars, smoke more weed, replace farms with food forests, sequester the fuck out of atmospheric carbon. Would it be enough to slow the death of Thwaites?
What if an oak tree could still shade this little yellow house in 2425?
It might see the strip mall suburb of Port Charlotte turn into a thriving town of vibrant neighborhoods, where every block has people trading seagrape jam and grilled nopales, acorn oil, backyard eggs, and fresh caught fish.
2425 is a mast year. The family living here makes acorn pancakes, muffins, porridge, soup, and ice cream for the Port Charlotte Winter Solstice Barbecue. The pancakes win a prize.
In 2325, the oak tree is a neighborhood unto itself. Mockingbirds gossip in the high branches. Cardinals chirp to each other from across its wide crown. An armadillo forages among its fallen twigs, crunch-crunching through the acorn caps.
In 2225, the oak shelters lost wanderers in a storm.
In 2125, the girl who lives here then climbs up the trunk, into the low, thick branches, to rescue a Florida panther cub. A species of least concern. The limbs are strong enough for both of them.
In 2025, Arthur Corey sits at his glass table, Cheerio-laden spoon hovering inches from his lips, sick with violent hope.
