EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to Resilient Goshen, a recurring column exploring the people, places and natural systems that shape our community. Written by Aaron Sawatsky-Kingsley, the City of Goshen’s director of Environmental Resilience, the series offers insight into the forests, waterways, wildlife and landscapes that make Goshen unique and the shared stewardship that helps them thrive.
By AARON SAWATSKY-KINGSLEY
Along the driveway to our house stands a massive silver maple. It divides into six tree-size trunks that spread and launch into the sky, arcing wide above the younger forest beneath. Over the past three years, I’ve watched a slow opening in the union of the two largest trunks. It has progressed from a seam to a fissure to a crack that opens and closes like a long mouth in the wind. It is a profound and defining rift.
I’ve debated the best course of action. The driveway is the only infrastructure the tree threatens. But there are lots of young trees and forest niches that the tree, when a large portion falls, will crush. In particular, there are a couple of oaks in the fall zone of the portion most likely to fail.
The debate has been whether to intervene and, if so, how much, or to let nature take its course. Intervening by removing parts of the tree’s canopy or attaching supports will not heal the tree or keep decay from pushing deep into it. But it would buy some time and help control the way the tree comes apart. Letting the tree break on its own, in my mind, honors the free manner in which it has grown, dramatically influencing and creating the microecosystem around it as it deteriorates, just as it has while maturing.
When to Let Nature Take Its Course
In the end, my choice in this debate became clear during the storms that rolled through Goshen last month. More than a third of the tree came crashing down onto the driveway and one of the young oaks. My brother and I first worked to free the tree, folded but unbroken. Even after the driveway was reopened, the oak remained bent over, struggling to reorient itself and its still-green leaves, its damaged wood tissue no longer able to carry its own weight.
In the wake of this heavy tree calving, I’m not sure whether I made the right choice about this dear silver maple. The tear in its side, in the canopy above and in the surrounding forest community is devastating, life changing and awe-inspiring. I’m anxious about the young oak and curious about how other plants and trees will respond to the new sunlight. I’m also concerned about how the remainder of the silver maple will continue to live and fall apart at the same time.
Tree Resilience Is About More Than Survival
All organisms and ecosystems have to manage this dynamic reality, from the smallest microcosms in the soil to the largest corporate systems, including entire nations like ours. How do they survive, thrive and live generously while managing complex organization, demanding relationships and chronic shortcomings, which can progress from merely limiting to precipitously lethal? Add to this the variables of age and experience, rapid flushes of growth and untested confidence in youth, reactionary caution and hardened strength in middle age, weakened structures and slowed processes in old age, and the importance of community becomes increasingly clear. No creature or collection of creatures can survive without a plurality of others.
As strong as the silver maple is and has been, it is also increasingly fragile. There are flaws in the most essential branch-to-trunk unions of this tree. These kinds of structural flaws typically originate early in a tree’s growth. As the years passed and the silver maple grew, adding more and more wooden weight along the length and width of its branches, the flawed unions at the trunk became increasingly stressed. Eventually, they were unable to hold together. This is exactly what I can see in the silver maple: a crack that travels 10 feet down into the trunk, right into its heart. The union was overwhelmed and could no longer hold the gigantic branches. The tremendous tear left a wound that will never heal.
The Lasting Legacy of a Silver Maple
Despite the flaws, including others that are still lurking, and the huge loss the silver maple has sustained, it is still very much alive. Its biology is intact and functioning, its leaves photosynthesizing and its roots gathering moisture and nutrients. The forest community around it, though altered, is also largely intact, already working to fill in and protect, and benefiting from the tree’s presence. In fact, the community will be the lasting legacy of the silver maple. It has sheltered and shaped plants, insects, animals and people around it for decades. Now, in its damaged and decomposing state, its body will feed the community in new ways for generations to come.
I feel the pain, and I understand the flaws that cause it. I also celebrate the beauty and goodness of this tree, which it pours into the world.
Aaron Sawatsky-Kingsley serves as Goshen’s director of Environmental Resilience and joined the City as its first urban forester in 2006. Readers can find this column bi-weekly on Saturdays in The Goshen News.
