Control
I'm taking the Trees Atlanta docent certification course, and today's lecture was about the building and planting of the beltline. Sure yes of course I'm impressed with the brownfield soil mitigation and the stormwater retention and all the tubes they've planted for threading security camera fibers and all of that. But I feel kind of sorry for the trees they plant on the beltline. They're orphans taken away from their parents and planted in a line with other orphans, and when they have babies, those are taken away. Because they're growing out in the open rather than in a shaded forest, most of the trees branch out in all directions and have to be pruned. In trees as in animals, slow growth correlates with longer lifespans and rapid growth correlates with early death. In contrast, yesterday I went to the Connally Nature Park and saw the gargantuan white oak dubbed Hank Aaron, who stands over 156 feet tall (about half a football field) and has lived more than 300 years. You can see along his trunk every lump where a limb has fallen off and the bark closed in around it. Hank's children stand among the surrounding trees, exchanging nutrients and signaling communications via the mycorrhizal network. If trees donate sugar water preferentially to their kin, Hank's children have certainly benefited from the fruits of his extensive canopy ranging 120 feet in diameter. After today’s lecture, I returned to the old-growth beech forest near my neighborhood on Beecher Street to visit the 150-year-old grandfather beech, who is also surrounded by her children. One day, when she’s just a hollow stump with no leaves of her own, they’ll donate the sugar water she needs to survive. The other challenge with planting along a corridor in the middle of a city is that it maximizes the surface area by which the arboretum is exposed to invasive species, which necessitates constant weeding forever and ever, or as long as Trees Atlanta keeps their contract with Atlanta Beltline. It's a great habitat for birds and pollinators; the native Piedmont groundcover provides a unique sense of place; and in certain places on the eastside the canopy on either side of the beltline is already touching overhead, creating shade for the middle-aged men in lycra. But it’s an arboretum, not a forest, no matter how liberally Trees Atlanta defines the word. I wasn't lucid enough to come to this conclusion when I was still in college, but in retrospect I should have let go of the urban ecology concentration as soon as it started to bore me. I do not have a mind for public policy or city planning, or history for that matter. Those things just don't stick in my brain. But ecology and biology dry like glue to my memory. I should've transferred to UGA for an ecology BA. Anyway, this is all to say that I won't be developing my tree tour at a beltline location. Maybe an amphibian tour of Cascade Springs Nature Preserve or a bike tour of the Lionel Hampton trail, or even a tree identification tour at Connally Nature Park. Just not the beltline, or any urban area lined with orphaned trees. In other news, last night I trudged several miles through the rain to what I thought was a wholesome arts and crafts night, and it turned out to be a drug party. Just like the Tupperware, Mary Kay, and Longaberger basket parties of yesteryear, samples of saleable items were staged for demonstration before a curated audience of the host's friends and acquaintances. Needless to say, I ended the night listening to a guy with a (single) bleach blonde dreadlock and (multiple) face tattoos tell me how the gifted programs of our youth were a mechanism for the CIA to comb elementary schools for clairvoyant children as part of MK Ultra. Honestly, I did have fun, but the next time I leave my dogs for a drug-fueled night, there'd better be dancing and sex and good music. In other news, I took two new classes at the athletic club, and I'm getting STRONG. My favorite neighbor is coming over for coffee in the morning and we're going to explore the creek that runs between our houses, so I have to go to sleep now good night!