Lessons under the Oak Tree may not have been written had it not been for an unexpected early morning phone call that led author Karen Kluger on a journey of discovery. Unable to return to sleep, the author went exploring with her zany dog. He sniffed his way to an old California oak grove. One oak stood out from the surrounding ancient coastal live oaks. Hundreds of clamoring crows filled the tree making that oak appear black. The dog raced toward the tree. The crows scattered like in Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds. Later that day, the author opened a dictionary and glanced at a picture she mistook for a human leg bone, but the caption read that it was actually a cross-section of a tree limb. Do people and trees, she wondered, have something in common? Like the rest of us, she’d been taught that trees need the carbon dioxide animals and humans exhale, and we need the oxygen plants and trees give off. Period. End of story.
But, what if it wasn’t. What if by defining the differences that separates us from nature and each other, rather than what unites us, societies create fear and loneliness? In the months ahead she found in the oak grove answers to her questions. The answers required her to think in new directions. The realization dawned that the brilliance of creation was not only its complexity brought about by the freedom of all things to evolve, but also its simplicity. She grew intrigued with the idea that a limited number of building blocks may be the basis of earth’s creation, the same way ten numbers, zero to nine, are re-arranged millions of ways to make all the phone numbers in the world.
Readers can follow this journey of discovery in which everything and everyone is connected in the circle of life. Throughout the forty-eight lively narratives, wisdom and hope ripple through the pages like the wind through the trees. As the author explores our sacred links to nature, she offers readers a vision of harmony with each other and the natural world. This is a broad ranging work with an emphasis on what nature can teach us about personal relationships, self-worth, and healing ourselves as well as the planet. After reading this book readers will see common trees in uncommon ways. They’ll find a loving universe revealed its secrets in nature where all people could readily find them, knowing for milleniums very few people would have books available to them. Nature’s wisdom is still as available as it was at the beginning of time. All we have to do is go outside, quiet the mind, open our hearts, ask and listen to the silence where we find answers to personal questions. Lessons Under the Oak Tree tells how nature can guide us toward a happy, meaningful life. Such knowledge is as simple as a tree, but not as complicated as the forest.
ISBN: Hardcover 1-4134-55-46-8
Softcover 1-4134-55-45-X
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"Karen Kluger
gives the reader
a wonderful
correlation between
man and nature.
As a horticulturist
I find her comments
of trees and forests
authentic, as a
member of the world's
society I find this
book inspirational
for its uplifting
messages."
--Herbert Piekow
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