“Our native woods are too scarce and too valuable, to degrade them to wasteful and unlovely uses.”
Paraphrasing Gustav Stickley,
“The Destruction of American Forests,” The Craftsman, November 1909
I am a “tree hugger” and a “tree hugger” will I always be.
As a child my friends and I climbed trees; with hammer and bent nails building rickety platforms on the sturdy branches of oak trees, so that we, along with our squirrel friends and the birds, could watch the world from on high. Thus we knew what eagles saw as they soared among the clouds.
As the father of two wonderful children, I lovingly planted trees, one for each, and watched them grow tall and strong.
I am a tree hugger.
I am an unabashed wanderer like Robert Frost or Thoreau. One who loves to walk in the woodlands, who loves to watch the trees in spring turn green, and spot the lovely dogwood flowers white and pink. In summer, to lay beside the river stream beneath the shady sycamore and elm, and in the fall to stroll the mountainside of America’s parks in awe of colors red, yellow, and gold from the maple and cherry trees.
Do not despair that winter steals Nature’s leaves and leaves the branches bare, for the pine and the cedar will forever be evergreen.
Good News!
Good news to all my fellow arborists, the North American hardwoods that come from Appalachian and Adirondack forests are growing considerably faster than they are being harvested. So much so that the American timberlands that stretch from Kentucky to Maine have doubled in volume.
Good news for wanderers like me.
“In life,” Gustav Stickley observed, “beauty and satisfaction are borne of economy.” Thus a walk in the park is good enough for me.
