I grew up on the Near West Side of Chicago in a neighborhood of concrete and asphalt that was nearly bereft of trees. The only trees in the neighborhood apart from the honey locusts that populated nearby Union Park were the ailanthus—“Trees of Heaven”—that managed to take root in vacant lots and in poor patches of dirt located in the most inhospitable of places. Like the reviled buckthorn, these tough weed trees were nearly impossible to eradicate.

In the spring of 1961, when I was 10, my elementary school, Ralph Waldo Emerson, observed Arbor Day by planting four American elms on the Paulina Street side of the school. Of course, I didn’t know that J. Sterling Morton of the Morton Salt Company had founded the day to highlight the importance of trees to the world, or that The Morton Arboretum existed to educate us all about the value they contribute to human life. Nor could I have fathomed that I would one day live in Lisle, drawn to the village because of its proximity to The Morton Arboretum, a place that has become a sacred space for me, allowing me the freedom to regularly commune with nature.

Emerson School was razed in the 1970s, as was the large apartment building where I grew up. During a recent visit there, it was nearly impossible for me to imagine that a community teeming with children once existed. The footprints of the school and my home seem impossibly small to have bounded such huge buildings. The only tangible proof for me that a vibrant, thriving, population actually resided in such a small area are the fifty-year-old American elms that have survived the ravages of Dutch elm disease and Chicago’s urban pollution. These majestic trees still stand near the intersection of Paulina and Walnut Streets, the only vestiges of a neighborhood that as a child I called home.

Name: Mark Boone
Email: m-boone@sbcglobal.net
Tree Species: Ulmus americana
Tree Height:
Crown Spread:
Trunk Diameter:
Tree Hugger(s):
City: Lisle

SHARE ON...

digg

facebook

reddit

del.icio.us