This post is contributed by Barnaby Porter from his archives. Read the previous post here.

It’s been a good year for acorns, phenomenal, judging from the amount of mast on ground. All day and all night I hear acorns dropping on the barn’s tin roof, on the woodshed, on the hood of my truck, on the porch deck, bouncing off tree limbs, tearing through leaves, landing in puddles and pebbling the ground – whack, clank, bonk, bop, boink. Not only have I never seen so many acorns, I’ve never heard so many either. They’ve been dropping for weeks now, and it’s not over yet.

This superabundance of falling nuts sent me scrambling for an old book that might tell me of the cycle of acorn production. In brief, it tells me that an acorn takes two years to mature and that the red oak (Quercus rubra) doesn’t begin to produce until it is about 25 years old. Not until age 50 or so does it drop large numbers of nuts. A 16-inch oak might yield 800 to 1,000 acorns in a single year, whereas a tree approaching 2 feet in diameter can yield anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000! Per acre figures are rather sketchy in this one source, being based on a mixed-species stand in Michigan, which produced 14,000 acorns per acre. That’s certainly an impressive number, but I dare say it only hints at the number of nuts plopping everywhere around here. How unusual is it? Abundant acorn crops occur in 2 to 5-year cycles, according to my book.

Though my own observations have been far from scientific, they do at least corroborate for me that something rather unusual has happened this year and that, if my memory is any good, it has been a lot longer than five years since this sort of acorn crop has fallen to earth. In many oak-shaded places, the ground is so littered with the little brown nuts it is rather like walking on a carpet of marbles.

Only the other day I was crawling under my tractor to change the oil. I found that by lying on my back and pushing with my feet, I could easily roll myself around as though I were suspended on ball bearings. The only problem was the sharp points on the acorns – they hurt.

A more dramatic example of the current acorn situation was reported to me by my father just last night. He and my brother went up to Camden to climb Mount Battie. Apparently, the trail was so littered with acorns that they experience some real problems in trying to work their way uphill, slipping and sliding backwards with every assault. Only by hauling themselves along by tree trunks and roots did they at last gain the summit. That image seemed somewhat hilarious to me, especially as I began to imagine their setting off an avalanche of acorns rumbling down the mountain, bouncing across Route 1 and roaring on out into Penobscot Bay. According to my father, coming back down was worse. With each step, their feet threatened to fly out from under them, which condition required them to flail their arms around like oars and to say “Whoa!” a lot.

Tractor maintenance and mountaineering difficulties notwithstanding, I think some of the repercussions of this season’s acorn crop remain to be seen. I’m particularly of a mind to keep an eye on the resulting health, vigor and reproductive pyrotechnics of the local mouse and squirrel populations. I was just today rummaging in my lumber barn and put up a stampede of mice amid flying acorn shrapnel the likes of which I haven’t seen in some time. Seven or eight mice scrambled up the walls and disappeared through the open eaves, leaping, I can only guess, into the wide, nut-brown yonder.

Considering the myriad fates that can befall an acorn, of which I have mentioned only a few here, it might seem a wonder that any will germinate at all, come spring. In fact, according to my book, it is only in years of abundant seed crops that the oaks see significant seedling production. Certainly, if every acorn that fell to earth became a tree, we’d have a real situation on our hands.

I find this whole cycle of nuts and trees remarkable in itself, even worthy of a little study, but in the instance of all these acorns and the part they’ve played in our lives just lately, I think it is the noise they make, boinking and bonking (clanking into the dog dish outside just now) everywhere around us that is most noteworthy to me. What other tree makes so much noise in the still of the night? What other tree compares to the mighty oak? And what better symbolizes hope for the future than the potential new life that is locked in every acorn?

Artist and author Barnaby Porter has had a varied career in marine research, aquaculture, and woodworking, among others. Most recently he partnered with his wife Susan as co-owners of the Maine Coast Book Shop & Cafe in downtown Damariscotta. In October 2021, Barnaby completed his tenure on Coastal Rivers’ Board of Trustees after six years of service.