Ode To A Dead Tree

You stumped me, you sly and courageous one.

There you were, performing in front of the house for all of our New Haven Octobers, even this very one, as you never played the part of victim.

Instead, you lit yourself organically, so bright in your reds and oranges that if Moses himself had walked the streets of East Rock he might have called the Burning Bush a weak copy.

Even this Halloween, you were nature’s costume, drawing as much attention from the little princesses and ninjas as the free ice cream samples at the soon-to-open Elena’s on Orange.

Indeed, every autumn you have been an East Rock tourist attractions for multitudes of owners of Leicas, Nikons, Canons and iPhones.

So, how is that when you were mortally infected you hid this fact from us? And, this October of all of them, you shined your very brightest?

Our admiration runs deep, even though as with every living thing your permanent record has its blemishes. For example, as the years have passed I held a certain worry about the way you wrapped yourself around wires that deliver electric current to our house.

I could imagine a pumped up nor’easter seeking out your branches and ripping away our ability to watch dreadful political news on television. Or for that matter, leaving our electric blanket cold, or making it impossible to toast the excellent bread I buy every Saturday from Flynn’s on State Street.

But now a worse fate has occurred. After an inspection by city arborists, you were diagnosed with a terminal illness, yet another that has been traced, since the days of the great Elm Disaster, to a variety of tree murders.

I have learned from Annie Mixsell, New Haven’s Tree Systems Coordinator and Tree Warden, an arboreal expert who supported this act of euthanasia on you, that there are about 29,000 trees that line our fortunate urban streets.

They are, the warden says, a great variety, including maples such as yourself, oaks, and varieties of elms that have proven resistant, if not immune, to the famous illness.

Like humans, all have their nemeses. Droughts, storms. Insects, diseases. And what happened to you, dear departed maple – the hollowing out of your center, and the transferring of all available nutrients to the branches, roots and leaves, that allowed such a colorful farewell.

When I saw the workmen out there, one of them up on a raised platform and running a powerful machine with the brand name of Vermeer (after he was a painter of light), I first figured, well, some trimming is necessary to avoid an electrical calamity. But then, a few minutes later, Suzanne screamed, ​“They’re cutting down our tree!”

Never mind that it wasn’t ​“our” tree, but the city’s. That’s because it sat on the strip of land between the sidewalk and the street. That’s what we used to refer to out in the Connecticut Western Reserve (the Cleveland, Ohio, area)– as the ​“tree lawn.”

Indeed, the URI (Urban Resource Initiative) has been planting trees on these strips for many years at no cost to homeowners, and a few years ago delivered a little linden to the left of the stately maple. URI, apparently, will grind your stumps, dear maple, and will likely plant another tree in the spring in the effort to replace you.

But, even given the miracles that trees deliver to us, it will take years before it ever stops Orange Street traffic the way you did.

And know this: We’ll always recall the autumn we moved in. You were green on that day, and the next you showed us how happy you were. And that’s how I’ll remember you.

Lary Bloom’s new book, I’ll Take New Haven: Tales of Discovery and Rejuvenation, is available at Barnes & Noble, Atticus downtown and Atticus Market, mActivity gym, RJ Julia Booksellers, Pilates Haven, Amazon, and by mail at [email protected].