The Trees I've Loved — and Lost

My neighbor told me she plans to cut down her tree and my heart stopped. The tree in question is an enormous Japanese maple that covers her yard and spills into my own. In the spring, it splashes a rich red across my bathroom window, and the tree has become such an integral part of my home that I can barely imagine life without it.

Besides, I am still smarting from the loss of the mimosa tree at the end of my block. The silky, pink blooms sprung to life each May and stuck around until August, perfectly complementing the mint green paint on the adjacent garage. It was cut down without fanfare last year. I imagine my neighbors enjoy the unobstructed space for their patio table and lawn chairs, but when I look at their yard, I only see what’s missing. 

The prospect of losing the maple with Arbor Day just around the corner flooded my mind with memories of other trees that have touched my life. I grew up in a pecan-orchard-turned-subdivision in Arlington, Texas, where the tree branches reached across the road to form a green tunnel that shaded your car as you weaved through the neighborhood. Visitors commented, but I never noticed. I wasn’t what you would call “outdoorsy.” I was a suburban girl, more inclined towards a trip to the mall than a walk in the park. What I did notice were the grocery bags full of pecans that my family harvested each year from the tree in our front yard alone. My dad even had a contraption for picking up the nuts without bending over—imagine a slinky on a broomstick and you get the picture. 

Sometimes, I was taken outdoors against my will. On a camping trip when I was eight, my friend’s mom invited us to play a game. She took us into a field, blindfolded us and introduced each of us to a tree that we were to learn by touch. She then brought us back to the field, restored our sight and let us loose to find our tree. For the rest of the trip, I smiled each time I saw “my” tree and brought home a sketchbook filled with its portraits.

Growing up didn’t do much for my love of nature, but I did have a favorite tree at my San Antonio university. The campus was known for its sprawling live oaks donated by the Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1960 and its Champion Mexican sycamore that stood 70 feet tall. The tree I loved was not so fancy. I don’t even know what kind it was, only that it sat in a concrete grid behind the dining hall among eight other nearly identical trees. But this one was so perfectly symmetrical that it delighted the eye and stood out among its peers. So devoted was I to this tree, I did a photo shoot with it when I graduated, back when that required a real camera and actual film.

In Southern California, I met the jacaranda. The bright lavender blooms line the streets of Los Angeles and Orange County in the spring and the fall. They always reminded me of that Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come, the sad one in which he ventures into his wife’s paintings after her suicide. Subject matter aside, walking among jacarandas feels like walking into a painting, and when its flowers fall it looks like purple rain. 

I once attended a funeral for a tree in San Francisco. I never knew the tree, but my neighbors did and were devastated by the loss. My husband mourned a different tree. Perhaps you remember it? The Keebler Elf Tree in Tower Grove Park had a burly trunk with a tiny door-like opening that beckoned to those who believe in magic. Its branches dipped low to the ground and swept up again, inviting intrepid readers to perch and lose themselves in other worlds. Once it was marked for destruction, children’s drawings appeared like talismans on the fence that surrounded it. All that love couldn’t save the tree. Its legacy lives on, though, commemorated on Schlafly beer cans. Like so many Saint Louisans, my husband still misses that tree. He says “losing a tree is like losing a friend.” 

Today is Arbor Day, a day to celebrate and plant trees. The first U.S. Arbor Day took place in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1872. Citizens planted over one million trees. If we attempted that feat in St. Louis today, where would we put them? Would we confine the trees to our parks and the Missouri Botanical Garden? Or would we use them to shade our parking lots, schools and homes and give some life to the luxury apartments popping up like weeds with no landscaping in sight? What trees have made your life better and what trees are worth fighting for?

I can’t stop thinking about the Japanese maple. Perhaps I pay closer attention knowing its days are numbered, but I hate to think this is the last season I will see sun dappling through its leaves. In my neighbor’s defense, the tree takes up her entire yard. In the tree’s defense, it is so, so beautiful. I guess I’m a nature lover after all.

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