OF DECIDUOUS TREES AND PIZZA

What, you may be asking yourselves, do deciduous trees have to do with pizza?  Allow me to explain.

These are two of the things (along with people, of course) that I miss from my early years in New Jersey.

 

In truth, I am happily ensconced in the Pacific Northwest, and don’t think much about New Jersey.  Still, there are a few things I dearly miss, and deciduous trees and Jersey pizza are among them.  

 

A number of years ago, while my husband, Bill, and I were visiting New Jersey, my brother and his wife took us for a stroll around the Princeton campus.  It was winter.  The trees were bare, and I walked around exclaiming over the beautiful, symmetrical shapes of the branches against the winter sky.  

 

My brother and sister-in-law thought I was nuts.  Bill was also a bit perplexed.  

 

Earlier this month, we visited Indianapolis to visit Bill’s siblings.  I once again spent a lot of time oohing and aahing over the airy profiles of deciduous trees. I was delighted by the openness of the views.                    

An Indianapolis street view

 

It’s not that we don’t have deciduous trees out here.  We do.  On our property, in fact, we have a weeping cherry, two maples, a Japanese snowbell, a Korean dogwood, a clarodendrum, and a winter hazel.  

We also have six enormous Douglas firs (“Doug firs” to locals). These majestic trees are over 150-feet tall and over 100-years-old. They house birds and squirrels, and give our back yard a park-like appearance. I am deeply grateful that whoever built our home (and the other homes in our neighborhood) 60 years ago chose to leave these trees standing, rather than taking them down as is so often the practice.  

 

Here’s the thing, though.  I love the Doug firs, and they are problematic.  They make our neighborhood what it is, and they are dangerous. Every year, at least one major windstorm comes roaring out of the Columbia River Gorge and takes out one or more Doug firs in our neighborhood.  One came down in a nearby yard a couple of winters ago, landing on and uprooting an enormous big-leaf maple in an adjacent yard.  A huge chunk of the maple landed in our backyard, killing several bushes, and creating a huge mess.  

 

It's not the danger or the mess that is bothering me lately, however.  Being surrounded by these trees is worth the risk.  I’m also happy with the evergreens on our property, intermixed as they are with deciduous trees, shrubs, and flower beds. It’s something else that is bothering me (and I hope my saying so won’t get me in trouble with my PNW friends).  Come winter with its gray skies, the endless lines of evergreens on the horizon can feel a bit, well, lumpen--a bit depressing.  Here, for instance, is the view beyond our front yard from an upstairs window.  

 

I don't wish to be rid of our evergreens; I just wish for more deciduous trees to open up the winter skyline.  I prefer the ratio of deciduous trees to evergreens that I grew up with in New Jersey.  I suppose that’s what comes of uprooting oneself. If I had grown up here, my heart would likely swell at the sight of an unbroken line of Doug firs.  

Ok, enough about trees. Let’s talk about pizza.  Jersey pizza. I have eaten healthier pizza – is that an oxymoron?  Heck, I have made healthier pizza. But, give me a Jersey pizza, thin-crusted and drenched in so much olive oil you have to pat it with a napkin to take off the excess.  

 

Now that’s pizza.  I make a bee-line for it whenever I visit my home state.

 

I wasn’t always a pizza afficionado, though.  I didn’t grow up eating it.  My British parents eschewed it, and, never having tried it, I assumed I didn’t like it. Hah! My first close encounter with a pizza was at the home of a friend over 50 years ago.  We were young enough to still be living with our parents, and this friend’s parents had a pool in their basement, where several of us had gathered to swim.  Someone ordered a pizza, and I, getting out of the pool without looking where I was going, stepped squarely on the poolside pie.  Was that mortification what finally got me try a slice the next time one was offered? I don’t remember.  Whatever it was that got me started, I have been a fan ever since. 

 

Here are a few other things I miss from my home state:  

 

Thunderstorms.  Despite the many thunderstorms you may have seen on Grey’s Anatomy, intended to convince you that the show is set in Seattle, we hardly ever have thunderstorms here in the Willamette Valley.  

I love a good thunderstorm, as long as I am indoors and out of danger. Every time I am back east, I wait in vain for one to appear. Sadly, I seem always to just miss them.  I well remember the way the New Jersey summer sky would turn an eerie almost-yellow, followed by, thunder and lightening and drenching rain. (Wait. Was the yellow sky caused by pollution?  This was before the Clean Air Act.)

The Jersey shore.  Sure, it often took my friends and me four or more hours to drive to the closest shore points, a trip that would have taken less than two hours if the Garden State Parkway hadn’t been perpetually bumper-to-bumper. (I can only assume the trip is more arduous now.) But, it was so worth it to bask in the sun (before I understood about skin cancer) and to swim in a swimmable ocean.  (The Pacific ocean off Oregon and Washington is, to put it mildly, rather chilly.)

 

Proximity to New York City.  No explanation required.  

 

Listen, I know Jersey gets a lot of bad press, but as you will have surmised, I believe this is quite undeserved.  It’s true that, after so many years on the west coast, I won't be moving back, but I am glad I grew up there and got to eat that delicious pizza under a deciduous tree.

 

 

AMPUTATION: REQUIEM FOR A DOUG FIR

I have lived in my current home for 26 years.  When my then-husband and I decided to move all those years ago, I took on the search, and in the process, walked into – and right back out of – many houses.  Would we have to settle for just OK?  When I became discouraged, several people told me that when the right house came along, I would know immediately.

They were right.

When I walked into the house where I now live, I knew it was the house.  I knew because I had kissed dozens of frogs, and this house was obviously a prince, orange shag carpet and bordello-red bathroom notwithstanding.  I could see beyond the awful décor because nearly every house I had looked at needed a great deal of cosmetic work, and because, to my delight, the house was nestled in trees, many trees, mostly Douglas firs, or what we call Doug firs here in the Pacific Northwest.

The Doug firs, which are all over the neighborhood, had, by some miracle, been left standing when the house, and those around it, was built in the early 1960s.  (I often bless the unknown builder for this forbearance.)

The trees were big – well over 100 feet tall, and old – well over 100 years old.

And so, we settled into the house among the trees.  We tore out the orange shag carpet, repainted the bordello-red bathroom (along with the yellow and orange and chartreuse and royal blue bedrooms), planted gardens, and looked up often in wonder.



Over the years, other things changed; my then husband and I divorced; our daughters grew up and away; a new husband moved in.  But one thing stayed the same – the trees. Yes, from time-to-time a neighbor removed a tree, and occasionally one came down in a storm, but by and large the trees remained.

And then, last year, we had one of our Doug firs removed after being told it had been weakened by insect damage.  In these circumstances, removal seemed the prudent thing, given the wind storms that rush out of the Columbia River Gorge most years.  Still, we felt awful.  It was sickening to watch this tree that had been growing for over 130 years come down in two days.  First the limbs were amputated.  Then the trunk was brought down piece by piece.

It had housed birds and squirrels.  It had shaded our house.  And it had sequestered literally tons of carbon.*

Sadly, the story gets worse.  After the limbs were removed and after dismemberment of the trunk had begun, we learned that the tree had not suffered insect damage.  It was perfectly healthy.

We had committed arborcide in the first degree.

I intend no humor here.

When I was a child, I was taught in school that only humans could communicate or had feelings, that all other animals operated by instinct alone.  Plants were not even worthy of mention.  Of course, we have learned that our ideas about other animals have been all wrong.  Many have elaborate systems of communication.  But that is a topic for another time.

Lately, I have been learning about trees, about how they live in communities and, while they don’t have what we would recognize as brains, communicate through soil fungi, sharing nutrients and warning one another of insect attacks.** After reading The Hidden Life of Trees (Peter Wohlleben) and The Overstory (Richard Powers), I felt even more anguish about the removal of our tree.

And then there is this.  I fear we have started a movement.  Our next-door neighbors decided to have one of their Doug firs removed along with ours because its roots were pushing up their patio.  And right now, I am listening to the sound of chain saws as another neighbor has three Doug firs removed because the trees drop sap and needles on their cars.

I can hardly bear to watch.  I am so sad.

  

As you can see, many trees remain.  But each one taken down is a huge loss.  A loss for the creatures that made it their home.  A loss for our senses.  A loss for a planet that struggles to keep its air clean.

Each leaves a hole in the sky.

I hope the rest of my neighbors will safeguard their Doug firs better than we did (if only we had gotten a second opinion), and that we will all learn to appreciate and protect our oldest trees, to see them as fellow beings and not as inconveniences.  If we do not, I fear the world we leave to our children will be a poorer and more polluted one.

* Mature Trees Are Biocarbon Heavyweights

**  The Whispering Trees