The trees have to be planted, watered, pruned, and cleaned-up after. At the college where I teach, crows live in the trees and dive-bomb people in the spring and early summer. I love crows, and I don't mind being dive-bombed by them. They're big, feisty, independent, and a little clumsy. Once a bald eagle glided in and landed on a fir tree on campus. Last year a terrible wind-storm left the campus blanketed thickly with boughs. When the facilities-folk must cut down a diseased tree, they always alert the campus first, so that no one, and especially no environmentalists, will get upset. Sometimes trees are planted in honor of people, and if a tree lasts long enough, it usually becomes a symbol for something more than just Nature. There's a massive sequoia on campus, and it's become something of a mascot. It oversees the cafeteria, as well as the cherry trees that were planted in remembrance of Japanese-American students at the college who were interred during World War II. The tree just stands there, unaware that it's reminding us that it will outlast all of us, that whatever importance we imagine we have brought to the campus is utterly illusory. It's a cautionary tree; reversing roles, it cuts us down to size.
Here's a wee, whimsical poem about trees on college campuses; well, at least it's intended to be whimsical.
Trees on a College Campus
They try to organize into a grove.
We’ll have none of it. Our curriculum
is severe. We rigorously prune and thin.
We launch lectures until sap retreats.
Huge firs outgrow us, write poetry
on the wind. The madrona
with eczema has stopped listening
to us. It gleefully flunks it quizzes
and will never contribute to
the Annual Fund. Elms chain-smoke
smog. The forest has stopped sending
its children to our college. Never
mind. Our tall standards and
broad lawns will see us through.
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