February 4, 2003
Oak tree letters
Our January 22 story about the gratuitous destruction of a perfectly-healthy 300-year-old oak tree in Buffalo (Killing a Tree, which also appeared in America's greatest weekly paper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, on the Counterpunch website and on several other websites), brought a flood of mail and a lot of good stories. Here are four of them—from North Carolina, Australia, East Aurora NY and Washington State.
Bernadette Pattison, Australia: "My husband and I, although elderly now, have decided to chain ourselves to two of the trees when the loppers arrive."
I read your story about the old oak tree, and it touched me deeply. Why do people see a beautiful old tree and want to cut it down! It is as if the age and beauty of such a thing throws out a challenge to them. As an Australian I can positively aver that we have so little left of our original biota that I believe to continue in this way is a crime. In the city where I live with my husband, Redcliffe, I have seen the demolition of huge Moreton Bay fig trees planted by the original settlers here 200 years ago. In their place they have raised a huge awning. The reasoning of these people defies belief. The council is now going to cut down huge old Norfolk Island pines planted at the same time as they have sold the land to developers. The pines are a striking feature on the beach front. My husband and I, although elderly now, have decided to chain ourselves to two of the trees when the loppers arrive. We know we won't win, but we have to show them that what they are doing is wrong. All life is sacred, be it human beings or other life on this planet. To think otherwise is a tragedy for us all. Greetings from Australia,
Jane T. Christensen, North Carolina: "They were one of the last remaining stands of virgin timber in North Carolina."
I was moved to write you after reading your wonderful story about the murder of the oak tree. I am brought to wonder at the sentiment I feel as we are poised to strike Iraq with nuclear weapons. Somehow the destruction of even a single oak speaks volumes of our callous disregard of all things living and beautiful. So I was very touched by your story. Now here's mine.
A friend of mine owns one of the oldest houses in North Carolina, built in 1747. There aren't many of these pre-Revolutionary houses left in this state. The Yankees burned a lot of them during the Civil War. But more importantly, it is set on 250 acres which my friend leases to run her cattle on. We ride over this land on horseback nearly every Sunday. It is a beautiful spot. There are abundant hills in an area that is mostly flat everywhere else. There is a nice wide stream that runs year round. We pause there in the shade and let our horses take a drink. On this land near the stream was once a Tuscarora Indian village. Before the old house was built, of course. There were trees there once.
Those trees survived until about five years ago when the absentee owner—a woman who lives in the city—had them all cut down. They were one of the last remaining stands of virgin timber in the state of North Carolina. There were not a lot of them—maybe 60 acres, but what a majestic canopy they were! The Indians that lived in the old Tuscarora settlement strode amidst those trees when they were young saplings. Later on, soldiers rested in their shade. And now they are all gone.
We ride every weekend over what remains. Some of the stumps are over 4 feet in diameter and solid to the core. The limbs that were discarded are too big around for a horse to step over, limbs that were once home to a multitude of birds and wildlife. The hillside where they lived is parched and eroded in the summer and freezing and windy in the winter. Nothing lives there. No dogtooth violets or ladies' slippers. Just weeds. It is a sickening sight to behold these limbs like arms from some pre-historic giant torn asunder in some violent battle. We pass through it quietly and quickly on our way to younger woods and shelter from the wind. Even the horses seem to quicken their pace to pass by this scene of carnage and desolation.
Most of the remaining hardwoods here in this state, and throughout the South, are turned into pallets. Pallets are usually discarded after their brief use. Many are tossed overboard at sea.
The absentee owner of this land probably never visited the trees she had cut.
Geoff Kelley, East Aurora: "I looked out the window and saw him crouched in his driveway...glowering up at the branches of my mother's trees."
A few summers ago I sat in the backyard of my mother's house in East Aurora under two beautiful beech trees, talking with the new next-door neighbor, a Buffalo fireman who repaired furnaces and boilers in his garage on his off-days. "New" is a relative term in East Aurora; he'd been there a few years. It was a picnic, so we were having a few drinks, and he started talking about his father's hatred for trees. His father cut down all the trees in their yard in South Buffalo and then stayed up nights despising the neighbors' trees, fretting that the roots were pulling apart his foundation or penetrating his pipes.
"In the middle of the night he'd be in basement staring at the walls," the firefighter said. "Once I saw him standing in the neighbor's yard at three in the morning, staring at this tree like he wanted to punch it."
We all laughed at that, but the next week the fireman cut down a line of seven pine trees that had been a curtain between my family's house and the adjacent backyard for at least 40 years. He said that they were a safety hazard, that kids like to climb trees. He was right, they do. Next to go was a maple in his front yard, then a Chinese ginko that the former neighbor, an English hypnotist, had both loved and hated for years. Last summer, during a visit, I looked out the window and saw him crouched in his driveway with a beech nut in his hand, glowering up at the branches of my mother's trees.
Onnie Adams, Richland, Washington: "...the maintenance man...did not want them."
Your article on your oak tree provoked the same feeling my husband I experienced a few years back with a similar incident.
We live in Richland Washington. This unique town was begun when the government moved into this quiet farming community and built the bomb that ended WWII. It is a relatively flat, dry area even though in boarders the Columbia River.
The reason I make the point above is that most of the trees that were planted around here were not growing until after 1944. A few blocks from where we live is a city (town) block with the Richland Library on one half and a community college building on the other. The block had beautiful Sycamore trees surrounding the whole block. Early one Saturday morning we drove by the block to see the city cutting all of the trees surrounding the community college. Since it was on a non-working day around here and so early in the morning, we felt as tho the plot to cut these with no one noticing was deliberately planned.
Frantically we went home and tried to call the city — closed. Also tried calling the college and no answer. Within an hour all was silent. It was, and still is an awful feeling in the pit of our stomachs when we drive by. I expected an uproar somewhere. There were a few letters to editor.
My husband went to a few city council member to see if there was a policy for cutting down the older, beautiful tree without checking with the city first. Nothing was ever done about establishing any policy.
The really disgusting part was, when we finally did get a "reason" for the trees being cut down: it was the maintenance person at the community college, which is in Pasco several miles away, that did not want them. He maintained they were tipping up the sidewalk and was convinced of a lawsuit to come. The library side still continues to maintain the other half of the block with no problem.
We have very hot summers & falls and the air-conditioning that those trees provided I am sure has increased the cost of keeping that building cool.
Copyright 2003 by Buffalo Report, Inc.