About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
It was a venerable oak.
According to Stockbridge Tree Warden Peter Curtin, the oak on Glendale Middle Road was four feet across.
“You measure width 4 and a 1/2 feet up from the ground and, at that point, this oak was 4 feet across. It was about 100 feet tall with the canopy spreading 75 feet.” Curtin said, “That makes it more than 100 years old.”
For 100 years it withstood the cold, wind and weather. It was standing when we entered WWI, when the United Nations was formed, and when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Now it is gone.
Berkshire towns and villages have different personalities and different things that identify each. Why not? They were settled at different times by different people and have different physical characteristics. For Stockbridge, it was always trees. Stockbridge has a long history of saving and nurturing trees, even at the expense of other considerations.
In the late 1880s, Emilia Brewer, schoolmistress and sister of United States Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer, literally laid down in front of the ditch-diggers to make her point.
The telegraph company asked Brewer for permission to dig the holes on her property on Yale Hill. Believing the poles would supplant trees and the wires would harm them, she replied with a firm and clear, “No.”
The telegraph company began to dig anyway. Brewer waited until the workers were gone and their machines were idle. She carried her bed outside and placed it over the hole where the telegraph pole was to be placed and slept there. In the morning, she remained in bed and told the returning workmen she would lie there as long as necessary. The workmen left.
Did Stockbridge get the telegraph? Of course: the telegraph company simply rerouted the poles around Brewer’s property.
It was equivalent to the current situation wherein the great oak was removed so a cell tower could be put in place, so progress could be made. Curtin’s position was simple and echoed Brewer’s: find a route around the tree.
Holding the value of trees above “progress,” Miss Brewer was the first in a long line of Stockbridge residents.
In 1884 Joseph Hodges Choate bought 39 acres on Prospect Hill Road. A Swamp Oak drew them to the property and was the deciding factor in the purchase. They picnicked under the huge old tree before the house was built.
Choate selected the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White to design the house. They in turn asked the Olmstead Brothers Landscape Architects to site the house. The situation of the house required the tree be cut down. Choate said no! Olmstead Brothers was replaced and the tree remained.
In 1887, with pride typical of Stockbridge, E.W.B. Canning submitted an article about a particularly exceptional Stockbridge tree to Popular Science magazine. It was accepted.
In addition to school teacher and selectman, Mary Flynn was director of Chesterwood. During her stint as director, Flynn worked with Peggy French Cresson. In the mid-20th century, Flynn said Cresson threatened to lie down in front of heavy equipment to save a tree.
“No one doubted she would,” Mary told me.
Cresson was a long time Laurel Hill Association member and tree lover. The workers sighed, gave up, and the tree survived.
Aside from rerouting newfangled inventions around old-growth trees, much can be done to save old trees: for example, clearing, pruning, and cabling. Former Stockbridge Police Chief Richard Wilcox was instrumental in securing a Community Preservation Corporation grant to save the trees on the Native American burial ground.
“One tree that could not be saved was about 200 years old,” Wilcox said. “From about the time the Stockbridge Indians sold the burying ground to Dr. Oliver Partridge (1809). I asked the tree company to cut a number of slices which were then given to the Stockbridge Indians and the Stockbridge Library Museum & Archives. I thought it was a little spiritual as those tree roots were among the burials.”
You might think Stockbridge residents are eccentric in their love of trees, but there is a practical value to trees. There is an environmental value and a value that can be calculated in hard cash.
According to the National Forestry Service, “Trees can be worth many thousands of dollars if they are good species in good condition in a prime location.”
According to Professor T. M. Das at Michigan State University, “A tree living for 50 years will generate $31,250 worth of oxygen, provide $62,000 worth of air pollution control, $31,250 worth of soil erosion and soil fertility, and $37,500 worth of water, as well as providing homes for animals to a value of $31,250. The total value of a 50-year-old tree is $193,250.”
The figure does not include the value of the fruit, if any, or the lumber.
According to “Growing Greener Cities,” a book published in 1992 by the American Forestry Association, trees have significant monetary benefits. They have found that a single tree provides $73 worth of air conditioning, $75 worth of erosion control, $75 worth of wildlife shelter, and $50 worth of air pollution reduction. Over 50 years at 5 percent interest, the value would be $57,151 (about $100,000 today).”
So by those calculations, Stockbridge just lost between $200,000 and $400,000 when it cut down a 100-year-old tree.
The selectman who wanted the tree cut down believed he was doing the right thing. The tree warden who wanted the tree saved believed he was right. Two selectmen stood with the tree warden in believing he should have been consulted. One selectman stood alone in bypassing the tree warden. In that there was irony.
At a previous selectboard meeting, he admonished another selectman not to exceed his duties. In bypassing the tree warden, he might have exceeded his. Operating alone, treating objections with condescension, and escalating and inflating potential consequences to cow and silence objections serves no one.
Had the tree warden, as advocate for the tree, and the selectman, as the advocate of progress, discussed the merits of their respective cases and listened to one another with respect, a compromise might have been found that served the best interests of the town.
In the alternative we needed one Stockbridge spinster, a bed, her unwavering values, strong principles, and her belief in the greater good. In that way Stockbridge got both the telegraph and the tree in 1883. It would have been nice to get both the old tree and the new tower in 2016.
