A Mast Year

The first acorns came down more than a month ago, and they were huge-- the size of walnuts. Our neighbors were already speculating about the coming winter, basing their predictions on everything from jet streams to caterpillar fur. Did these ginormous acorns mean anything, omen-wise? Or were they more a reaction to the recent past (last winter having been the hardest on record for the mountains of North Carolina)?

Time will tell if monster acorns portend anything more than fat squirrels, but I have heard from experts that this is "a mast year." The word "mast" comes from the Old English "maest" referring to nuts of forest trees that have accumulated on the ground. Oaks, chestnuts, pines and spruce trees all produce mast. In a mast year, those trees massively overproduce in what seems like a concerted way over a large area. Nobody really understands what brings on a mast year, although it is thought that temperature might be used by trees to synchronize their reproductive activity. 

Hmm, I wonder if it could be related to the phenomenon that women who spend lots of time together (travel together, for instance) often find that their menstrual cycles synchronize? Then they produce a lot of nuts... . Okay, not exactly.

A mast year is often followed by a year of hardly-any-mast-at-all, so a word to the wise squirrel: consider freeze-drying.