I think many a tree planter is delighting in staying indoors and catching a respite from digging. That wouldn’t be me, however. I found myself out there planting some of my tiny Redbud saplings and moving some potted nursery trees into safer spots. Little breaks in the weather allow us to take care of some last minute details. One thing this above-freezing window allowed us to do is pour the footings for our nursery shelter. Our fine carpenter, tree lover, neighbor and friend Kevin Hood motivated all aspects of this shelter that will be a permanent fixture in the nursery. This week Kevin poured the footings for the beefy 6x6 posts that will raise the asymmetrical roof of his design. Getting these posts in now will allow us to build through the winter. We hope to have a metal roof up there with gutters that catch rain into 2 separate 300 gallon totes by spring. This is all in the name of watering our babies in the hot summer months. This structure will also be a place to sit and learn about trees, swap perennials, trade seeds, pot saplings, write poetry, get out of the rain, and many other yet to be discovered activities. This drawing just shows the basics, but it will actually be a convertible; we’re building in benches and a table that can get out of the way quick when Paul is coming through with the tractor or bobcat. That’s also why the roof will be close to 10 feet tall. Keep your eye on the progress and get in touch if you want to help build. We’re so excited to be creating new spaces out of mostly unnoticed occasionally mowed lots. Thanks, Detroit.

I love people who love trees. We’re a special breed aren’t we? What a joy to get a couple dozen tree people together to do what we love. Planting a tree is always such a satisfying experience. I’m sure you know the feelings - deliberation about placement, digging a perfect hole, filling it with goodies for the tree, setting the tree into a home you expect it to thrive in long after you are off planet, then you step back and look at what you have done. You have planted a tree. Then you look at it from the other side and get the same satisfaction all over again. Then you step across the street to look at it. It’s there. It’s home. You can’t wait until you next walk the dog or drive by. You can’t wait till fall to see the colors change. You can’t wait till spring to see the flowers and new leaves. And on it goes for the rest of your life. There is nothing like it. I’m so happy for you to have planted a tree.

Now, take these feelings and amplify them one-hundred times. We got to jam over a hundred trees into three city lots in neat rows- all types of exquisite forms and colors mingling there as a family, just like the volunteers who came out to do the work. I am filled with gratitude and joy for all the friends, neighbors, and tree kin who spent the weekend out there materializing dreams, stepping through ourselves and time into the future. It’s like that. You know, this is what tree planting is - tree life and tree time are ways for us to connect to a past and a future that are way beyond our little nows and concepts of self.

It’s perfect how Paul kept saying when people were stressing over details of placement, “come on, we’re not building a cathedral.” That’s coming from the guy who spent about 70 hours on the tractor just prepping the ground before a tree ever showed up. It helped me realize how much we were building a cathedral. His point, I think, was that while we are doing something so grand and spiritual for most of us, actually there is no wrong way to do it. I like this kind of cathedral. The trees will take care of themselves if we just get them into the ground.

Trees, in fact , will take care of themselves if we just let them. When we stop mowing for a season here they come. It’s really all we need to do; they throw their seeds far and wide and suddenly there’s a forest. Trees always do way better when they plant themselves. I don’t believe that they like to be dug up necessarily, or travel at 70 miles per hour on the freeway. However, in the name of diversity and aesthetics we bring the trees together in this formation. Some people are not ready for the beautiful chaos of a million trees planting themselves. The tree nursery and the arboretum are a gateway into the love of a forest. And for people who have or have ever had any problem with trees we have to step gently and paint beautiful landscapes with the trees so that they can see them. These trees are the paint box for Poletown. They will move out into the streets and arbs over the next few years and be the brush strokes of a future that is ours and those yet to come. Don’t ever be the againstest, be the forest.

We’ve all been in a parking lot, and we’ve all been in a forest, or at least in the shade of trees.  Contrasting these two experiences is the only climate science I need.  The world is nicer under a tree, and much nicer under lots of trees.  We have paved, plowed, and mowed too much land, and that’s period.  It was a bad idea.  Let’s all get to work unpaving and planting trees.  We don’t even have to actively plant if we’re just that lazy.  Trees will do even this for us.  If we could unpave and refrain from mowing, the forest would arrive at out doorstep, free of charge. 

This plan is called leave trees.  It’s called let the Earth do her thing.  It’s also called sit back and enjoy the ride.  We busy ourselves fighting nature in our own backyard and then want to fly to Costa Rica to see a forest.  We mow everything that’s not a blade of grass and are up in arms when someone in Brazil does the same.  We deforested most of this continent, and still clear cut trees for toilet paper and junk mail, so who are we to talk?  If we’re so concerned about where the forest is going, welcome it into our lives.  I feel so bad for anyone who has not met a forest and fallen in love. A forest should not be something that any of us has to drive to.  We need forests everywhere so that rural, suburban, and urban kids can know them and love them, and seek to protect them. Being afraid of the forest is so medieval.  Many of the people with the most wealth and power have lost their connection to the forest.  Love some trees.  Get over grass.  Get over beef.  And get on with the good life.

We talk so much about “human-caused climate change.”  It’s actually “adult-caused climate change.”  We adults are the ones making the decisions.  Greta Thunberg is so right to be pissed.  And if she ever gets unpissed then she’s right there with the adults who are dumbfounded and defensive about being called out.  The kids have so much to teach us.  It is our turn to listen and open to what they know.  I’d be such a primitive version of myself without my daughters midwifing my old straight ass into this millennium. And I considered myself a pretty self-realized sensitive guy before I met them.  I’ll just say that I’m better every year that I open up and listen to the youth.  We should all try it sometime, all the time.  I feel terrible for some people who are not fortunate to have young teachers in their lives, and even worse for parents who have teachers they are not listening to.  Please make sure that this is not you.  For example, my daughters have had several friends who are one name and gender in our house, and another at home.  To not listen to and open up to your child is to not know her or him.  Because your daughter cannot tell you she is not Jim and not Dave and not Tony, not the son you thought she was, does not change the fact that she is not the son you thought she was.  And she is not the son you persist in thinking she is, no matter how hard you persist.  Who loses because of your fantasy?

This sounds like a tangent, but it is brought to you by our tired delusions about this climate crisis, and as Greta put it, our “fairy tales of eternal economic growth.”  Isn’t it an interesting twist the the adults are the ones believing the fairy tales?  The strength of our stubbornness and delusions does not make the delusions real.  I’m so happy that the strongest, clearest message about the global climate crisis is coming from the youth.  There is definitely some kind of calculus at play here- the kids have nothing but future, and adults have nothing but past.  Their eyes and minds are fresh and open while ours can be jaded and calcified in obsolete patterns and beliefs.  I remember how aghast I was at 18 when I began to wake up to how wrong our systems are.  I screamed about it and changed what I could in myself, but eventually got very used to the systems that disgusted me. We adults seem unable to afford to admit that these systems did not, and do not work.  We have seen so much of the past that we are crippled in our vision of the future. We are so heavily invested in our comfortable way of life that we refuse to change course. 

I know that I am preaching to the choir, so I need not go on.  Since we are the choir, I suggest we sing.  Let’s celebrate the youth and get behind them and next to them in any way that we can.  Let’s make sure that their voices are amplified and respected.  Let’s make sure that they do not acclimate and inure to broken systems.  Let’s get out of the way.