Redding Connecticut Holiday Ornament - The Conservation Oak

The Conservation Oak. Look closely at the grass. From across the room it's a meadow at the foot of an old oak. Up close, the blades spell a word. Redding has been reading its land that way for a very long time.

This one is for giving. Hang one, and send the rest to the friends and neighbors who keep the woods the woods - the trail tender, the easement donor, the neighbor who mows the meadow late for the bobolinks, the couple who walk Saugatuck Falls every Sunday. Send one down the hill, too, to friends in the shore towns, where open space was discovered about the time the last of it sold. Spread the word. It's right there in the grass.

This was farm country first - pastured hillsides, stone walls, a limekiln at the north end that shipped plaster powder to New York, charcoal burners at the south. When the Erie Canal opened the West, the farmers followed it, and the forest crept back over the walls they left behind. By the 1930s Redding was woods again, with fewer than two thousand people living in them and no particular plan to keep it that way.

The plan came from the town itself. In 1887 Redding residents talked the state into creating its first state park, at General Putnam's winter camp. In 1965 they founded a Land Trust. When the Great Ledge above Devil's Den went on the market in 1988, the whole town chipped in to buy it. The trails - sixty miles of them - are cleared every year by volunteers. Today nearly forty percent of Redding is protected land, among the highest shares of any town in Connecticut, and the regional vision for keeping New England forested is run from a foundation on Lonetown Road.

The oak on this ornament is nobody's tree in particular. It's the one that got to grow.

Printed on a three-inch faceted crystal glass round, white-backed so the deep spruce engraving holds against a lit tree. Drawn in the manner of an 1880s wood engraving, with a single red ribbon tied around the trunk and CONSERVATION worked into the grass. The faceted edge catches light from every angle. Arrives boxed - your choice of white or gold gift box at checkout.

3-inch (76 mm) round crystal glass ornament · faceted gem-cut edge · white-backed print for crisp contrast · red ribbon hanger · your choice of white or gold gift box, included · free U.S. shipping.