Trees and the human quality of life

This is a newspaper column I just dashed off.

I saw a sign like this – actually a placard – only one other time in two decades of exploring both natural lands and urban places in Pennsylvania.

And that previous time wasn’t in a spot of public land. It was on the grounds of the Phipps Conservatory in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh.

The recent find: I was hiking along an urban thoroughfare from Point A (a parking lot in front of a strip mall) to Point B (the Church Street Marketplace) in Burlington, Vt., when the 6X10-inch sign placed at eye level in the crook of a northern oak tree invited me to look closer.

(Learn about the Church Street Marketplace at www.churchstmarketplace.com/).

“Please . . . love this tree,” said the sign’s headline next to a black-on-white impression of a tree with spreading crown.

Then: “It gives you shade and clean air to breathe.”

Indeed it does. Indeed they do.

More: “Water and care for it like it’s your own. This tree was planted by the Burlington Parks and Recreation Department. What type of tree is it?”

The closer: “This tree was grown by volunteers of Branch Out Burlington! In the Bulrington Community Tree Nursery. For more information on urban tree care: www.branchoutburlington.org

So Plant a tree, not a lawn (a.k.a. a turf farm). Here’s why:

-        Trees combat the greenhouse effect (To produce its food, a tree absorbs and locks away carbon dioxide in the wood, roots and leaves. Carbon dioxide is a global warming gas. A forest is a carbon storage area or a "sink" that can lock up as much carbon as it produces. This locking-up process "stores" carbon as wood and not as a global-warming "greenhouse" gas.

-        Trees clean the air;

-        Trees provide oxygen;

-        Trees cool the streets and the city;

-        Trees conserve energy and water;

-        Trees help prevent water pollution;

-        Trees slow runoff and hold soil in place;

-        Trees buffer noise pollution sources;

-        Trees act as wind breaks;

-        Trees make great places to hide in the childhood game of hide-and-seek, and the big ones are perfect locales for tree houses.

I remember many favorite trees, trees that I loved on first glance.

-        My first Alligator Juniper tree in south-central New Mexico;

-        The Shabark Hickory I once gawked at every time I stood near its trunk along Little Nescopeck Creek a mile from Conyngham;

-        The 1,000-year-old Douglas-fir wife Monica photographed me standing next to in the Grove of the Patriarchs, Mt. Rainer National Park, Washington State;

-        The Hackberry I planted in the backyard of our home in Conyngham;

-        And the big Yellow Birch I hugged uphill of the back side of Heart Lake, Adirondacks.

Take a moment; reflect back on your own encounters with the trees of Wild Nature. And ask your local municipality’s leaders why it doesn’t have a similar nature education program in place.

A tree with a story to tell

I've walked past this tree dozens of times during visits to Boise, Idaho, during which came visits to Mom and Sister. And I think about the tree when completing a fitness walk route through the village of Essex Junction just to my north. Look carefully at the trunk of this tree, especially where it meets the ground. Yes, that's asphalt surrounding the trunk's base. Citizens had to yell loudly and wage a campaign to save this tree. Too bad for us all - and the trees, too - that those which were felled to make way for more sprawl housing in EJ. Trees filter the air and soften the racket (noise pollution) from nearby streets and lawn-mowing neighbors. Too often, though, trees (which can take many decades to reacyh the size of this one) are cleared in minutes with chain saws. Think about it.

Towns should invest in walkability, not infrastructure for cars

Parking, roads, sprawl housing and highways equal traffic congestion.

That’s what I see daily on one particular highway in Vermont.

And just as I used to do while walking along Route 93 in and near Conyngham, I look closely at each passing car to determine how many people are in it. My conservative estimate is this: Only one of every 99 motor vehicles that zips past me as I walk the shared walkway/bicycle path has more than one person – the driver – inside the cab of the hurtling 2,000-pound hunk of steel, plastic and glass.

That tells me this: There is no ride-sharing or carpooling to speak of. Vermonters, just like most Americans across the land, are true believers in the “freedom to pollute” philosophy I first heard about while a college student at Idaho State University in the early 970s.

(I write to air some personal thoughts, not pass on those of any organization).

After having my new passport photo taken at the town hall in early July (yes, Vermont has “towns;” Pennsylvania has one, Bloomsburg), I walked across the street to the Williston library to get a new library card. And it will let me borrow books from other local libraries, like the one in Essex Junction village to the north, which I actually live closer to and can walk to, not drive.

I could walk as well to the Williston library, but doing so would pose all sorts of safety hazards – all created by the absence of sidewalks or walkway.

When parking at a grocery store two miles from home, I always shake my head in wonderment at the home builder’s sign stuck into the turf across the road I just traveled, for that is a perfect example of what helps generate more vehicular traffic in the first place: Sprawl development.

It’s the same “highway-leads-to-sprawl-and-more-cars” situation I saw for years snaking across the Nescopeck Creek valley outside Conyngham.

Yes, I know everyone deserves a nice home. It’s American, after all. But yet I see, while walking, more than a few nice places for sale these days, both in Williston and in Essex Junction. It was much the same situation in the Hazleton area during my two decades there.

 How about we try and get people into these existing houses before more natural land is chewed up for a new sprawl neighborhood and its attendant automobiles? Will there be yet another “meadows” development in Sugarloaf? It’s inevitable, I guess.

So, I offer some suggestions: Put walkways, bicycle paths and sidewalks at the top of the funding heap. And remember that spending less on roads means more for public health and environmental mitigation.

Don’t allow any more trees to be felled. Trees native to Pennsylvania (just as those native to northern New England) are carbon dioxide sinks and yield oxygen in the bargain.

The objective of our municipal planning work should be to give people the freedom to move about freely without the burden of enormous gasoline and automobile expenses. What could be more American than that?

P.S. Experts recommend at least 2½ hours of moderate activity (such as brisk walking, brisk cycling, or yard work) a week.  It's fine to walk in blocks of 10 minutes or more throughout your day and week. If you're worried about how brisk walking might affect your health, talk with your doctor before you start a walking program. Daily dog walks are also a great way to keep up your walking routine.

And walking helps you meet other folks. You can’t do that when behind the wheel of your car, truck or SUV.

 You can read more at http://www.fletcherallen.org/health_information/?id=tp23026

Vermont, I grant, is a leader in alternative transportation choices, but widening highways or building new ones simply to relieve congestion does not work – regardless of the state.

Cozy homes for cars: Parking garages

Here is another of my recent newspaper columns:

We’ve been down this road before, buckaroos, but let’s make a U-turn and take another look.

An on-line discussion about an alleged car-parking “problem” in Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, spurs this ramble. (See http://vtdigger.org/2013/12/02/survey-says-montpelier-parking-problem).

One person got things rolling by posting a wish that Montpelier have more parking spaces – slots closer to destinations, like shopping, workplaces, eateries, and such. The goal, of course, would be to make life “easier” and limit walking (a time-honored form of exercise) by building a parking “garage.”

Most Americans who drive a private car, SUV or truck have been in one of these concrete, asphalt and steel things. I hiked around inside the one at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington,Vt., a couple of weeks ago after a medical appointment inside. I hiked for a good hour before finding my car.

Parking garages are huge white elephants, expensive to build, expensive to maintain, unpleasant to look at, and, as others have noted, a crutch for our car-centric culture.

“It would be preferable to find ways to reduce cars in the city, not give them comfy subsidized nests that preclude other, more desirable, uses,” a reader wrote.

His conclusion: “I subscribe to the idea that Montpelier doesn’t have a parking problem – it has a walking problem. It’s easy to find a place to park and shop if you are willing to hoof it a bit. And, you might even drop in on some other store on impulse. Cool! Walking to a store in Montpelier is a lot more fun than playing dodge ‘em with cars in some soulless sidewalk-less big box asphalt desert.”
Wow, well said.
I started thinking about cars, congestion, air and noise pollution, and stormwater runoff about the same time my wife and I moved to Conyngham in 1989 after three years in the Adirondacks. Watching motor vehicles plying Route 93 in the Nescopeck Creek valley was the anecdotal-enriching experience.

Today, I see the same heartless expression of America on wheels in northern Vermont. This time it’s Vermont highway 2A.

Try this yourself sometime soon (it’s more fun than watching tee vee): With clipboard in hand, stand or, better yet, sit at a good place to observe a local highway (Route 309 would qualify nicely) and keep a tally of those passing vehicles with more than one person inside (the driver). If my own experience watching the flow of steel/rubber/plastic/glass is the same as yours, what you’ll record is this: Only one of every 100 or so automobiles passing your vantage point is carrying more than one individual.

I’m not sure what car-buyers these days learn from their dealer-of-choice about their auto’s emissions. And just this morning I sat in a niece’s new Toyota Prius. Nice car, you bet, and the electronic gizmos are astounding.
You can find out for yourself what your own vehicle emits by burning gasoline. Go to www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/420f08024.pdf

I drive a car too, but I’ve also been a committed walker (for fitness, transportation and fun) for a long time. But here’s the glitch: Parking is only an alleged “nightmare” if one chooses to limit his transportation options to one: The private automobile.

Arguably, the private, family car and the infrastructure needed to keep motor vehicle fleets on the move are among the biggest reasons out there for the ongoing decimation of our country’s natural heritage. McMansions these days come, more often than not, with a three-car garage.

Done right, municipalities can have a high quality-of-life rating and be more walkable, more livable, more fun to be in, and better for the air we all breath – motorists and walkers and bicyclists alike – if we stop trying to make things bigger and better for cars and cars alone.

A closing observation: Just days ago, I sadly found another road-killed owl. This time the species was barred owl. Over decades of birding and observing nature, I have now recorded these six road-kill owl species: barred, barn, eastern screech, great horned, burrowing and western screech.

Our ongoing societal desire to make things best for cars is to blame.

Is sprawl development coming back?

Hell, it never left, as far as I can tell. And I have watched it chew up the natural landscape for decades. That's a byproduct of life as a long-distance fitness walker. You get to see American ugly and listen to its noise pollution (leaf blowers!) along the way. The photo with this posting is sprawl happening about two miles from m home in Williston, Vermont. The NY Times offers this reporting on the subject of sprawl.