With a breathtaking leap, Reston, the Washington suburb where I live, has hurtled from winter into summer. Last week I wore parkas and windcheaters, as I walked around the lake, and prayed for spring. What I have got instead is this hasty visitor, an impatient summer, intruding on my dream of an equable vernal respite.
Granted my morning walk was late, and the usual harmony of birds was long past. My craving for an over-easy egg and a large mug of coffee delayed my saunter. When I finally sallied this morning, I was astounded. The sun was strong and the air was warm. It was decidedly summer, not spring.
Granted my morning walk was late, and the usual harmony of birds was long past. My craving for an over-easy egg and a large mug of coffee delayed my saunter. When I finally sallied this morning, I was astounded. The sun was strong and the air was warm. It was decidedly summer, not spring.
Unlike most of my friends, I don’t ascertain the weather by reading the temperature on the computer or hearing it on the television. I check it by stepping outside. It gives me a chance to be surprised. Sometimes I go out on a mild afternoon, without noticing the gathering clouds, and return thoroughly drenched. But more often I step out on a nondescript morning and the sun bursts forth in all its glory and makes me happy to be alive. The ripples on the lake nearby glitter and meld as I pass, and the cool breeze feels like a caressing finger on my face.
It seems comical to say this, but Reston has taught me to look around me. There is so much to see. There are so many trees on both sides of the trail that I appear to receive an honor guard every time I walk. I don’t know their names; when somebody tells me, I forget them. What will I do with a generic name anyway, when the trees are so unique? Each one has a unique bark, unusual roots, unmatched shape and a fanciful set of branches. Each is beautiful in its own way, and some are truly spectacular. Nobody loves poetry as much as I do, but I quite understand Joyce Kilmer when she says,
“I think I will never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.”
My brother, Pritish, was a swashbuckling reporter, and of all his remarkable interviews the one that sticks in my memory is the one he did of a quirky Bollywood celebrity. When asked about his closest friends, the star led Pritish to his garden and started introducing the trees by the eccentric but familiar names he had given them. You may not care for the kooky names he had conferred on the trees, but you cannot but be impressed by the tenderness with which he daily sang to the trees, his beloved buddies. I confess that I have begun to think of the giant firs near my home as fraternal too.
It was painful to find our arborist has decreed an order of execution on my neighbor’s tree. No doubt she has her reason: perhaps some arboreal disease or a perilous weakening of her roots. But it was a decision that hurt. It is a tree I have watched change through the seasons year after year. I have seen it grow taller and more luxuriant. Now to find that it had to go was not very pleasant.
It seems comical to say this, but Reston has taught me to look around me. There is so much to see. There are so many trees on both sides of the trail that I appear to receive an honor guard every time I walk. I don’t know their names; when somebody tells me, I forget them. What will I do with a generic name anyway, when the trees are so unique? Each one has a unique bark, unusual roots, unmatched shape and a fanciful set of branches. Each is beautiful in its own way, and some are truly spectacular. Nobody loves poetry as much as I do, but I quite understand Joyce Kilmer when she says,
“I think I will never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.”
My brother, Pritish, was a swashbuckling reporter, and of all his remarkable interviews the one that sticks in my memory is the one he did of a quirky Bollywood celebrity. When asked about his closest friends, the star led Pritish to his garden and started introducing the trees by the eccentric but familiar names he had given them. You may not care for the kooky names he had conferred on the trees, but you cannot but be impressed by the tenderness with which he daily sang to the trees, his beloved buddies. I confess that I have begun to think of the giant firs near my home as fraternal too.
It was painful to find our arborist has decreed an order of execution on my neighbor’s tree. No doubt she has her reason: perhaps some arboreal disease or a perilous weakening of her roots. But it was a decision that hurt. It is a tree I have watched change through the seasons year after year. I have seen it grow taller and more luxuriant. Now to find that it had to go was not very pleasant.
What made it uglier was the process of its removal, which I saw for the first time. A huge tree is not gone in a second; it is more like one of the cruelest forms of torture and murder. Experts explained to me that, if you bring down a massive tree, however well you control the process, it may land on a house or a garage and wreck it. The right way is to chop it off bit by bit. A crane placed an expert chopper on a high branch of the tree and he secured himself with ropes to the trunk-top. With an electric saw he cut off the highest branches and the very top of the tree. Then the crane took the man off and placed him on another side of the tree, where the branches came off one by one. Step by step the fellow expertly chopped of all the higher branches and then the lower branches. Little by little he lopped the trunk of the tree. It was execution by inches, some form of heartless killing akin to what was done in the middle ages. Finally, came the last bit: the saw neatly took out the last bit of the trunk, which was placed with the other parts in a truck, to be taken to some lumber factory. The execution was complete.
I was saddened by the horrid spectacle. For the first time in my life I understood the enormity of a tragedy taking place around us. Trees are vital to us humans, for they not only create oxygen for us but also absorb deadly carbon monoxide from the environment. They reduce the need for air-conditioning and use of fossil fuels for energy. Thomas Crowther of Yale has painstakingly gathered statistics from different countries and estimated that there are three trillion trees on our planet. About 400 trees for each of us. If that sounds a lot, you better remember that since the start of civilization about 12,000 years ago we have cut down about half of the world’s trees. The planet that is our home is losing 15 billion trees every year.
I was saddened by the horrid spectacle. For the first time in my life I understood the enormity of a tragedy taking place around us. Trees are vital to us humans, for they not only create oxygen for us but also absorb deadly carbon monoxide from the environment. They reduce the need for air-conditioning and use of fossil fuels for energy. Thomas Crowther of Yale has painstakingly gathered statistics from different countries and estimated that there are three trillion trees on our planet. About 400 trees for each of us. If that sounds a lot, you better remember that since the start of civilization about 12,000 years ago we have cut down about half of the world’s trees. The planet that is our home is losing 15 billion trees every year.
I am fortunate that these bright summer days I still walk among an opulence of trees. I hope that they will stay and brighten my remaining days. No, there is no better poem that a glossy-green, glorious tree.
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