There was a time, early on, when I believed teaching would be the work that saved me. Not in some grand, salvific sense, but in the quiet way a rhythm or ritual can root a person to the world. It gave me something to hold onto—a calling, a structure, a reason to wake early and stay late. I imagined myself as a young tree in a sunlit grove, surrounded by others just as eager, just as green, all of us reaching upward in hope and purpose. We would grow together, I thought. We would change the landscape.
Now, as I approach the close of my eighteenth year in the classroom, I look around and realize how few of us are still standing. The grove has thinned. Some have moved on, some have burned out, some were quietly cut down by forces they couldn’t resist—policy, burnout, illness, despair. I no longer see a forest. I see scattered silhouettes. I see myself.
And in Caspar David Friedrich’s The Lonely Tree, I see a mirror.
The oak at the center of his canvas rises from the earth like a monument to persistence. Its crown is broken. Its upper limbs are bare and jagged, reaching into a gray sky that neither threatens nor comforts. The landscape stretches out around it—fertile, yes, but indifferent. The tree is not celebrated; it is endured. And yet, look closer—its lower branches still bear leaves. Life remains, quietly defiant.
That is where I find myself now. A veteran of classrooms and corridors. Of assemblies and parent meetings. Of tests and retests and policies that come like storms and vanish like morning mist. I have become the old oak.
As Albert Camus once wrote, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” I have needed that truth. Because there are winters in this profession—long ones. Moments when you question if you are doing more harm than good by staying. Moments when the temptation to uproot yourself becomes nearly unbearable. But still, I remain.
The early years were about growth. Now, I see my role differently. I am no longer stretching upward—I am holding the line. I am the one who remembers. The one who warns. The one who steadies. I do not bloom as often, but I carry seeds. I offer shelter in small ways. A quiet word. A hand on a shoulder. A look that says, I see you—and I know.
Wendell Berry once said, “The teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.” I understand that now. The fruit of my labor is not seen in applause or acknowledgment. It is in the way a student later faces the world—how they write, how they speak, how they choose to keep going when it would be easier to quit. That is the unseen forest I help grow.
And still, I remain.
Friedrich’s oak is not majestic in the classical sense. It is not symmetrical or lush. But it holds the history of wind. It knows the weight of years. It is a place where sheep gather for shade. It is a fixed point in a landscape that is always shifting. In that, there is sacredness.
Thomas Merton once wrote, “There is in all visible things… a hidden wholeness.” The veteran oak may be scarred, but it is whole. So, too, am I. I carry my wounds with me—years when students left midyear without warning, funerals I attended for boys not old enough to shave, battles with bureaucracy that left me exhausted and unseen. And still—I show up. I open the door. I teach.
Because maybe now it’s not about becoming something. Maybe it’s about being—being someone others can trust, someone who remains rooted when everything else feels transient. Maybe the goal is not to thrive, but to endure with grace.
I may no longer be the forest’s pride, but I am its memory. Its persistence. Its whisper of continuity.
Let the winds blow. Let the storms come. The oak still stands.
So do I.