This magnificent Bur Oak grows in a prairie opening of Southwest Michigan which has today become a suburb of Kalamazoo. This original portaging place from the St Joseph to the Kalamazoo River watersheds conferred a meaningful place-name to Portage. Until recently the landscape was agricultural and dotted with large Victorian farmhouses speaking of successful farmers tilling the deep prairie soils, but now it is a place that grows tract housing and mini-malls.

The tree however still thrives; its limbs reaching out and sweeping to the ground in the signature gesture of an open-grown patriarch. It's been standing here long before there was an incorporated entity of Portage, before Titus Bronson's arrival in the Kalamazoo River Valley, long before there was even a land office in White Pigeon opening up the territory for settlement – selling what it didn't own.

The Bur Oak was once known as the Redwood of the prairies because it survives fire – and the Pottawatomie managed the prairies for grazing by periodically burning them. This tree is a living bridge to the civilization preceding ours and thus very rare.

I have occasionally stopped to admire and draw this tree. Some years ago I noticed a curious mix of historic buildings being relocated to the nearby farm as they were being displaced by shopping malls and housing. An hydro geology firm set up shop in one of the relocated buildings and the original farmhouse became an office for the nature conservancy.

Then I heard that the owner had been offered a million dollars by Walgreen's Corporation, but that preferring the company of the big tree he turned them down. We slip so easily into believing that there are no altruistic gestures or selfless people. We don't always know the good they do but they are here among us, quietly active in our own community.