Good Oak

One unfortunate result of the new theater was the necessary removal of a number of very nice trees. The most difficult for me personally was the 42" dba pin oak (Quercus palustris) just outside of the footprint of the building. What a beautiful tree she was, straight and strong, and a canopy reaching nearly 100 feet in diameter. We tried everything we could within the given design, but our early foundation work and later overhead work would have killed her for sure. I knew the arborist who brought her down. Even he said, "what a shame". After the last of the trunk was set on the ground, I visited the pieces and was struck by the amount of biomass which lay at my feet. Years of photosynthesis, decades of converting the sun's energy to wood and bark. The energy this single tree represented was enormous. I thought of Aldo Leopold and his essay from A Sand County Almanac, "Good Oak." He writes, "There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace." I guess there's a lot of time to think about these things in February in Wisconsin. A Sand County Almanac should be required reading for all humans on our planet.