Gather ‘round, kidlets, and I’ll tell you a story about trees. Much of it is true and some I made up. You decide.
Way back in the last century, a town’s history committee decided that a certain stand of trees and their majestic canopy covering six town blocks should be “protected for posterity.” The trees were known far and wide as a tree tunnel to the town’s outdoor music stage. The committee recommended that the town council make it an official landmark. And so, they did.
The town had protected landmarks before, but mostly buildings, not living things. The care for the latest landmark would come from the town parks department, where someone may have spoken a bold paraphrase from Gone With the Wind, “Lawzy, we don’t know nothin’ ‘bout takin’ care of landmarks!” But a voice on high said, “Well, they’ve been growing here for 90 years, how hard can it be? Let’s just do the same thing.” And so, they did.