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Volume 114, Number 331 - Tuesday, October 20, 1998
Middletown has some great trees
by John Friedlander
In the last issue, I explained that I've lived in Middletown for eighteen years, with the exception of the last nine months, which I spent in the Pacific Northwest in a town strikingly similar to Middletown. I also promised to compare the two towns with a freshly renewed perspective. Here's the first installment.
My first comment is positive: Middletown has great trees! I was lucky enough to return just as autumn began, and I haven't been disappointed with the Technicolor rainbow nature has delivered thus far. What's more, we value our trees standing -- a stark contrast to the Pacific Northwest, where trees seem to be viewed primarily as a harvestable commodity. Out west I saw endless stands of evergreens, from the far too rare protected old-growth forests and the incredible giants that tower there, to the boring and way too common faux forests of fast-growing Douglas Fir, harvested and replanted by multi-national timber and pulp conglomerates. In between lay ravaged, naked hillsides, testimony to our hunger for wood products and paper.
Last year I had to deal with my Middletown home's sewer line, which had become clogged and destroyed by the roots of the red maple tree in my front yard. (I can hear the "been there, done that" mutters from here, fellow homeowners.) I confess that I wouldn't have been sorry to see that tree felled, since its roots rupture my driveway, make my front yard a mowing and walking nightmare, and threaten even worse consequences to my basement.
But the people entrusted with the care and preservation of Middletown's trees work from a different set of values. They did not approve of my intention to prevent future problems by dropping the tree, and now I'm glad they didn't. The broken and obsolete clay-tile sewer was replaced with root-resistant PVC pipe, and the tree still provides shade on hot summer afternoons, a brilliant flame of beauty on sunny autumn evenings, and contributes to the world's oxygen supply for most of the year.
Much loved and missed Middletown resident Kerste deBoer, memorialized by the magnificent arboretum of 47 different types of trees along Wadsworth Street and Long Lane, was absolutely right to point out the tremendous value of Middletown's tallest flora. I've lived where the trees are thin and sparse, and traveled through places they hardly exist. Our New England autumn may make the most visible argument, but don't let the colder gray of coming winter's branches or the continuous green of next spring and summer's leaves bore you into thinking our trees can be taken for granted.
Housing developers, take note! Working around existing trees instead of bulldozing and planting saplings may be more difficult, but it pays back in more immediately enjoyable communities, with higher perceived values!
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