Sit under this oak tree near the riverbank. There are acorns all around you. Pick one up. You can leave it here; a squirrel will bury it. In the winter it will be food for him, or maybe he will forget it. Perhaps the acorn will become a new tree someday, and grow tall among the other oaks; more likely it will be cut down by the gardeners of this city park.
You can take the acorn home, set it a shelf. You might look at it years from now, and remember this otherwise undistinguished autumn afternoon. Or not; maybe you will forget the acorn, too.
You can throw the acorn in the river. It will float, at least for a while. Probably it will soon sink, be buried in silt, rot. Maybe, though, maybe it will keep floating -- out to sea, across the ocean, wash up on a shore where no oaks have ever stood, and grow there. Years from now, people would see that tree, and wonder 'how did an oak tree ever get here?' Then the acorn will not be forgotten.
A simple thing, this acorn, your hand. You hold, even in this most insignificant act, a limited kind of godhood. You have dominion over this acorn, that squirrel, the river, the ocean, the far-away shore, the people who might someday see your displaced oak. You are the fulcrum of probabilities, ranging from the ordinary and predictable to the wildly unlikely. Throw the acorn.
Copyright 1993 Edward Gaillard. All rights reserved.
Author's note: Gary Heston pointed out that viable acorns sink in fresh water. Ouch. I'd like to test whether good acorns will float in salt water, since the river involved is the Hudson (whose lower reaches are usually ocean water) but I've never gotten around to it.