A Lifetime of Trees

Several years ago I went to a funeral of a woman I had know for years. She was an older friend of mine who lived simply in a small town in the midwest. The town was in the Plain States surrounded by miles and miles of fields, mostly corn and soybeans. The land was dry and hot most summers unless it rained which often caused flooding even with what felt like only moderate amounts of rain. Yet the little town was full of trees: a refuge from the intensity of the heat, absorbing the rainfall like a sponge, and even in winter (although I had only once been to visit my friend in winter) the trees felt like protection from the harsh cold winds that blew relentlessly over the fields. I never paid the trees much attention beyond a passive gratitude for refreshing shade on hot days and never considered the fact that almost every tree in the town was under fifty years old. That is, until this funeral service of my good friend.

At June's funeral, many people got up and spoke about her kindness, her love of people and place, her commitment to community and family. All this I had known to some extent. But it wasn't until the end of the service when a longterm friend and neighbor spoke, that I really sat on the edge of my seat. He was a soft spoken man with graying hair and kind eyes. When this man had moved to town, he said there were very few trees. The winds were too strong, the conditions a bit harsh for trees of any suitable size, at least, that is what the consensus was at the time. And yet June was convinced it was possible. He met June for the first time on their shared street as she was planting seeds. She persisted in planting, he said, despite the brutal conditions and lack of success of some of those first seedlings. In the beginning she used to go out at dusk when it was cool or just before a predicted rain storm and plant: acorns, nuts, maple, cherry or apple seeds. The first few years were rough, he said, but she persisted doggedly. The town governance at the time was in full support, though skeptical, but didn't have funds to tackle a town-wide tree-planting. In the early years she eventually received rewards for her planting efforts, especially as her success became ever more apparent. Over time however, as the terms of office shifted and more newcomers filtered through the town and the trees grew, her efforts were forgotten and very few knew that it was June who had planted and kept planting the trees in town. Or that only a few short decades earlier there had been hardly any trees at all in town. Yet this never stopped her or dampened her enthusiasm and love of trees and flowers, too. In fact, she seemed to prefer avoiding the limelight and kept quietly planting. She always carried a small bag of seeds, so he said, with her in a pocket or purse.

This man described how year by year he would watch the songbirds that migrated through in spring  come back in greater and greater numbers despite the national records saying their populations were decreasing nationally. His eyes lit up as he talked about the pair of Orchard Orioles that eventually came back year after year to nest in his own backyard a tree that June had helped him plant. "The impact of the life of a single person" he said softly, leaning into the microphone in the front of the room, "cannot easily be measured in one way or another. Though to me it feels as though June is with us still in the trees she left behind. She's in the colorful songbirds and butterflies and the richer soil below us. It feels as though each footprint she left behind is blooming still."

There was a respectful silence as June's neighbor nodded a thanks to us all and returned to his seat. It felt deeper than the silences that had followed the previous speakers and with it came an unspoken invitation to continue the work June had begun. It was as if each one of us was trying to imagine the town without its wealth of trees. In essence, June had single-handedly planted an urban forest. How many trees were there? Hundreds? Could it be thousands? I felt the impact of her life resonate within my own and a profound gratitude to this man I didn't know. 

After the funeral I walked through the town looking at the trees, the flowering shrubs and woody perennials. I had known June for years, but never knew that it was she who was solely responsible for nearly all of the trees in town. I felt the gift of her life more strongly, more palpably than ever, as if she was still with us in the the very trees she had planted. Every tree began from a seed and June had extensively collected seeds, transplanted saplings, and tended the trees of this small town until they were able to stand on their own. Instead of dry and dusty and hot in summer, the town center was cool, shaded and beautifully refreshing with the oaks, maples, basswood, cherry, apple, hickory, ash, spruce, pines, hemlocks, alders, birch, sycamore, walnuts, butternuts and locusts!

Could June have been a Sparrow, I thought? A Sparrow in spirit at the very least! How many others were out there, I wondered. How many forests were grown in the matter of decades by people like June? Perhaps I'll never know, but it gave me a thrill just to know there might be others out there quietly planting forests one seed or sapling at time.