|
I grew up across from Yorkwood
Elementary School (it wasn't there until I started 3rd grade). Behind it
is a woods, a real, natural chunk of the Eastern Deciduous Forest. I don't
know it's name - we just called it the Bird Sanctuary. It was where I spent
my days with my friends, playing at pirates and having adventures. We had
forts in many trees, even in a hollow beech log. It is where I saw my first
snapping turtle, and caught it and let it go.
We used to
dine there: beechnuts and acorns and raspberries, competing with box turtles
and foxes for the berries. And grapes, sweet, sour, black little things.
The beechnuts were the best, rewarding a bit of work with a rich flavor.
And the trees. I didn't even know
their names (names are not important), just their personalities. The hollow
trees we watched decay year by year. A huge tree came crashing down one
night, and we spent days exploring the vast horizontal crown.
I never knew what effect these
trees were having on me. I went off to the Peabody to become a musician,
then did other things for a while, then eventually returned to the trees
and began exploring their mysteries as a scientist. I even took a job in
Kentucky because the forests here reminded me of the Bird Sanctuary.
Street trees
are all well and good, but they will never, by themselves, be the community
forest. We need the wild places for kids to ramble and eat and climb and
dream.
And the Bird Sanctuary is still
there. I go back to it every now and then. I remember most of the trees
and visit them. Now, I know their names.
-- Tom Kimmerer, Forest Biologist,
University of Kentucky
|
