Last week, Wilden Avenue was opened up again after being closed for major reconstruction since the summer of 2022.
That was a long time for the immediate residents to live with construction. It was a long time for many others in nearby neighborhoods to navigate around.
And it was a long time for other commuters, maybe just used to Wilden being the shortest way to get from A to B. So, there is a lot to be thankful about having this road open again, including gratitude to all the workers, engineers, and planners who played a role in the project.
I also want to give thanks to the trees which now line Wilden Ave, which were planted in the 24 hours prior to the road opening. And I want to be pointed about being thankful to these trees, not just for them.
I know that the idea of being thankful to a tree — or a dog, or a bird, or a river, or a road for that matter, creatures and things which we don’t usually imagine as being able to appreciate gratitude — may strike us as odd or silly or pointless. But I want to press that point, as gently as I can.
For one thing, trees are living. Every part of them, from the roots to the bark to the buds and the leaves contribute to the life and the health of each individual tree. This is true of the large trees that once lined Wilden Avenue, and its true of the small ones which now are in their place.
I don’t know how to prove whether or not any of them understand human thankfulness toward them; but, as living creatures, like humans, they benefit when their lives are not taken for granted. Being thankful to someone or something, in its essence, is a way of saying, “I don’t take you for granted”.
I think we often fall into a thoughtless pattern of experiencing gratitude as a transaction: I’m thankful to you because of what you did, I’m thankful for what was provided, I’m thankful for what I don’t have to deal with. Its an idea which suggests that if I don’t know you, or if you haven’t done anything particularly meaningful for me, I don’t have any reason to be thankful to you.
By extension, the newly planted trees don’t appear to be doing anything — anything at all — especially for anyone, so why be thankful to them? And of course, there is our larger cultural norm that typically gives a side-eyed shake of the head to the notion of being thankful to a plant.
Even if thankfulness is reduced only to a transaction — you did this, therefore I’m grateful — there are lots of reasons to be thankful to trees. Most of us are aware of various things which trees provide for us: lots of foods, oxygen, shade, cleaned air and water, cooled neighborhoods, protection, stable soils. And those are just some of the things they provide while alive. (Dead trees give us wood for holding up powerlines, building houses, furniture, paper, the list is pretty endless.) But I want to work toward gratitude that isn’t tit-for-tat; I want to be thankful to these new trees in a way that says, “I don’t take you for granted.”
These new trees are young, small, and very vulnerable. They are only about two inches in diameter. The bark protecting their living tissue is paper thin. Their roots were cut when they were dug from a field several hours south of Goshen, they were bundled onto a truck and moved, they were unloaded onto a street, all highly unnatural.
Then they were planted in rough urban soils, along a busy street, one of the toughest environments for any tree to live in. They were watered and mulched, which is great, but which is sort of the equivalent of being sent into the wilderness with a knife and a box of matches. And we expect them to weather the winter and leaf out in the spring. And then go on to live long, vibrant, productive lives. At least, that’s what I hope, that’s what I expect.
That’s a lot to ask from these small, fragile trees.
I feel thankful to these trees (not just for them), because they are here, and because they are trees. They had no choice in the matter — I know that. But that makes me all the more thankful, recognizing what has happened to them, and knowing that despite their new reality they will strive beautifully.
Again, they don’t have a choice in the matter, its just who they are. That’s how trees behave. This is the nature of young, uprooted, transplanted trees. I am deeply thankful to them.
I do not take these trees for granted.