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TT: RE: First-Time Foresters

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On a snowbound Kentucky day, Richard's post reminded me of why I became a
forester and plant physiologist. This isn't exactly a community forestry
story, but maybe it illustrates the importance of community forests to
children. It's also a Baltimore story.

I grew up across from Yorkwood Elementary School (it wasn't there until I
started 3rd grade).  Behind it is a woods, a real, natural chunk of the
Eastern Deciduous Forest.  I don't know it's name - we just called it the
Bird Sanctuary.  It was where I spent my days with my friends, playing at
pirates and having adventures.  We had forts in many trees, even in a hollow
beech log.  It is where I saw my first snapping turtle, and caught it and
let it go.

We used to dine there: beechnuts and acorns and raspberries, competing with
box turtles and foxes for the berries.  And grapes, sweet, sour, black
little things. The beechnuts were the best, rewarding a bit of work with a
rich flavor.

And the trees.  I didn't even know their names (names are not important),
just their personalities.  The hollow trees we watched decay year by year.
A huge tree came crashing down one night,  and we spent days exploring the
vast horizontal crown.

I never knew what effect these trees were having on me.  I went off to the
Peabody to become a musician, then did other things for a while, then
eventually returned to the trees and began exploring their mysteries as a
scientist.  I even took a job in Kentucky because the forests here reminded
me of the Bird Sanctuary.

Street trees are all well and good, but they will never, by themselves, be
the community forest.  We need the wild places for kids to ramble and eat
and climb and dream.

And the Bird Sanctuary is still there.  I go back to it every now and then.
I remember most of the trees and visit them.  Now, I know their names.

Tom Kimmerer
Forest Biologist
University of Kentucky
Lexington KY 40546-0073
606-257-1824
Fax 606-323-1031
tkimmer@pop.uky.edu
Visit the TreeWeb at http://quercus.uky.edu

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