Thoughts on a sapling

I got a new tree last week.

It came as a surprise. A city crew snuck up under the cover of daylight, dug a hole in my boulevard, added a sapling, backfilled and left without so much as a how-do-you-do or by-your-leave.

It’s a spindly little thing, its uppermost spindle reaching perhaps two or three heads higher than the top of my own. The trunk – if we choose to dignify it as such – will need a couple of years worth of well-watered growth if it were fated to become a sturdy walking stick. As to its genus and species, that remains a mystery. Still leafless, it has no easily distinguishable characteristic beyond the generic “tree.” As the world greens up, we may discern some specifics.

I have to admit, my first visceral reaction was less than Joyce Kilmer-esque, “One more thing to mow around,” But now that the city had blessed me with a belated Arbor Day present I feel the obligation to protect and nurture the little woodland refugee as best I am able.

There is something semi-mystical about planting trees. In this culture of gigabyte downloads and no-wait drive-throughs that little sapling is one of the few things I have custody of that I don’t expect to outlast. Given the most optimistic actuarial table, if both tree and I continue in good health, that little elm, maple, larch or whatever it is will still be in the flower of youth when my mortal being will have been rendered very much mortal. Even with the best possible mutual prognosis, I expect to be well into my final decrepitude before its pencil-thick branches are sufficient in size to offer much more than a lawn chair’s worth of summer shade. Meantime, I’ll mulch it, water it, mow around it, and rake up after it, all to no measurable personal benefit.

But I’ll do it because, well, I can and, ultimately, somebody has to do it.

A tree lasts a long time, but it doesn’t last forever. That new tree will grow in the remembered shade of the giant old oak whose hollowed stump is a planter for summer flowers. Thirty years ago, when I took possession of my little corner of the world, it was shaded by six tall, healthy trees. One by one they fell victim to wind, rot and disease, until only one remains, and it’s mere months away from the chainsaw and stump grinder. If we want trees we have to plant trees, care for trees, pay for trees.

That’s true for trees and for a lot of things.

We’ve been forgetting that a lot lately.

Out in the street, not more than 10 feet from that newly planted tree is a not so new pothole. That’s nothing unusual. All over the country our streets are pockmarked with potholes and below them we have leaky water mains and century old sewer pipes. And it’s not just streets and pipes, so much of what we depend on – physical structures and human services and relationships – we’ve let get old and cratered. We’ve looked the other way, pretending that cutting our taxes would somehow magically fix the streets, rebuild bridges and teach our kids.

It's been a generation since we committed our country, our communities, to supporting, restoring and replacing the things we all need to live and grow in comfort and prosperity. Just like trees we need to continually plant, mulch, water and mow around infrastructure and institutions if they are to be there for us and those coming after.

Yeah, I don’t expect I’ll get much good from that little tree. But if the rabbits don’t gnaw it this winter and the road salt plowed onto the boulevard in the winter slush doesn’t seep down to pickle its roots, it will be here for the children of the toddler’s living down the street to play under and climb. Some things we don’t just do for ourselves. Sometimes, we plant trees.