Happy Earth Day!
Writing by treason on Friday, 22 of April , 2005 at 10:53 pm
I love trees. Not just because I attended Joyce Kilmer Elementary School, either. Allow me to tell you the story of our Bradford pear. Part of the landscaping package when this house was built was the choice of four shrubs and a tree. I looked at the choices and thought I made the smart one. Bradford pears were hardy, had an attractive shape, blossomed profusely in the spring, and displayed lovely color in the fall. Every Bradford pear except this one. From the start, I knew it was a sickly specimen. After the first year, we should have bid it a fond adieu and planted something that, today, would look like a tree. But, deluded Cubs fan that I am, I thought if we could just give it another chance it would be the season: the year the leaves wouldn’t turn yellow, curl up, and turn black. So for eight years we watered and fed it, and tried every potion recommended by the nursery. And for eight years, its leaves turned yellow, curled up, and turned black. I had to face facts. Not only was the tree bringing down the neighborhood, it was bringing me down. Finally, we made the difficult decision to remove it. And then a robin decided to build its nest in it. It was a sign. The robin could have built its nest in any tree in the subdivision, but it chose our pathetic little pear. A reprieve. We would have to wait, then off the tree after the little robins learned to fly and left home. But then I went online and researched robins. Did you know that a robin, once its offspring have grown and flown, will return to the nest and lay more eggs? Not surprising: this nest was the eighth wonder of the world. A veritable masterpiece of engineering. So we waited…and waited for the robin to return and start another family. It didn’t. We reluctantly removed the tree.
I know that nature, left to its own devices, can get ugly. When I put something in the ground I feel obligated to keep it there. On some level I know that pruning, like trimming your hair, is a good thing. Yet I tend not to cut things back or keep a manicured garden until the situation gets completely out of hand. I imagine that this is the way it is with environmentalists. They must believe that nature should be left to its own devices, and that humans shouldn’t intervene.
I suppose I thought of myself as an environmentalist when, at 17, I went off to a liberal arts university in a part of the country where fishing and lumber were the only industries supporting the local economy. I wanted to save the whales, so to help the poor dolphins, I stopped eating tuna. (To this day, I continue to cut those plastic soda six pack holders into little pieces so that no creature gets entangled and dies an agonizing death. I realize I probably don’t need to do this, but some habits die harder than others. I do eat tuna.) Anyway, I discovered that I was attending a liberal college in an otherwise conservative part of the state. People owned homes, had businesses, raised families. They had invested in that community. I was merely visiting. Yet every election, my college buddies and I would show up to vote and influence which way legislation would go. Eventually, the lumber companies disappeared and the economy collapsed. People lost their homes, couples divorced, rates of depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide rose. Yet the student body remained unscathed. Once they graduated, they returned to wherever they’d come from — places where there were jobs — and left a horrible mess behind. I’d had conversations with the people in the community and I heard their stories and saw the devastation. But I attributed the situation to a changing economy and didn’t make the connection to the university or the changing demographics. I didn’t make the connection until several years after graduation when I returned to the area on a road trip. I made my way up the highway, as I’d done a hundred times before, anticipating the majestic splendor of redwood trees. But what I saw instead was a dying forest. Sick trees, diseased trees, dying trees. The moist green that I’d remembered was now a washed out color — a grayish, brownish, muddy tone. The trees looked tired. Ill. And I felt ill. The forest had been left to its own devices, and now it was dying. When the lumber companies had been allowed to operate in those forests, they removed the sick and diseased plants and cultivated new ones to replace the ones that were harvested. And it was then that I learned a couple things. One must prune to maintain a healthy garden (or forest), and… Treason number seven: Environmentalism is a good thing — to a point. And then it becomes ridiculous and even dangerous.
I do not support environmental groups; instead, I monitor my own consumption of resources and I don’t feel that I use more than my share. I recycle, but I’m not a fanatic. I do tend to recycle paper more than any other items. But I feel I have a solution that, to me, provides a better long term plan for the health of the planet than if I were to just collect aluminum cans and buy recycled toilet paper. I am pruning the family tree. I don’t have children, I won’t have children. When I assume room temperature and my organs are harvested and whatever’s leftover is incinerated, my consumption of resources is complete. Let someone else’s children wring their hands over the health of the planet, for all I care.
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