uprooted

By Rachel Warner

Four graves lie outside my house. The corpses are situated in patches of brown grass surrounded by cement. The memorial was an open-casket ceremony. Despite the decaying lives being openly displayed, morning joggers do not give the deaths a single glance, neighborhood dogs still urinate on the tombstones, and no one offers a thought to the lives that once were.

It has been three years since the four birch trees in front of my home were cut down by city planners, citing the trees as a danger to the surrounding sidewalk. For over a decade, the trees had been growing and expanding their roots beneath the nearby pavement, causing the suffocating sidewalk to uplift over time. Their expansion was simply a survival tactic: the roots were grasping deep and wide for nutrients, water, and oxygen to maintain their livelihood. The pavement at the surface, however, could not withstand such growth. The perfectly square panels of cement began to crease and crinkle and crack over time, wounds of a battle between the natural and built worlds. As the roots began to reclaim their land, the built world sought intervention.

One forgettable day in the spring, my family received a written notice on our front door. The white slip of paper with red markings stated that the trees were a threat to public safety, as the roots had caused extensive elevation of the sidewalk that prevented walkability. The notice looked less like a safety precaution and more like a prescription for an irreversible diagnosis: the planners had detected extensive root growth, and each tree had six months to live before being cut by the city.

On the day of their death, the trees died slowly and painfully and gut-wrenchingly. I watched from my window as the city workers shaved off each protruding branch, one by one, tree by tree. The vibrating blades of the hedge-trimmers effortlessly sliced through each limb, without regard for the years of care and sacrifice given by the tree to sustain each extension. With each cut, the broken limbs fell lifelessly to the street and the sidewalk. Once each tree had been stripped of its branches, the workers congregated around the stem, and the hedge-trimmer made its final movement to cut the base of the tree. The emotionless procedure repeated until all that was left were four stumps level with the sidewalk.

For over two decades, the four birch trees lived lives defined by care and community and strength. The trees watched over my brother and I playing kickball in the street after school; carried and comforted the hummingbirds during their morning visits; and braved brutal conditions of snow and wind and heat, even when surrounding trees fell. The trees were indestructible to the natural world for years but were destructed by humans within minutes.

With the trees gone, I realized that the expanding roots were merely a casualty, a symptom of an ignorance that had plagued my community. To suburban America, the trees were just another ornament to uphold the ideal of the “white picket fence.” The trees offered shade perfectly curated for my middle-class, predominantly white neighborhood but were intentionally absent in the surrounding low-income, POC neighborhoods. The trees shaded the houses that used boundless amounts of energy and cooled the gas-guzzling vehicles that slowly killed them. To my community, the trees were simply a replaceable convenience, backdrop, and aesthetic.

Somehow, we forgot that trees are dynamic organisms both containing and fostering communities for survival. The organisms are ever-changing homes to over a trillion cells and microbes. The life forms communicate through and rely on underground networks to transfer chemical and electrical signals. The creatures share nutrients so that when one member suffers, the community provides. Trees protect each other.

From the beginning, the trees were not meant to survive in my neighborhood. They were planted without sufficient room to grow, taken out of their native environment, and unwillingly placed in a checkerboard of human infrastructure. When the trees began repelling the sidewalk, we underestimated their strength and their resistance, making them culprits in a manufactured system. When the trees sought release, we were reminded that we are simply foreigners in a natural world and eradicated the plants.

To the trees, I am sorry that you were given an unfair chance at life. I am sorry that you died at such a young age. I am sorry that you were taken advantage of. Thank you for watching over my family and my neighborhood, even when we did not do the same for you. Thank you for acting selflessly, protecting yourself and your multitudes. Everyday I walk past your remains, and I hope for a future in which you and your descendants are safe and recognized: given enough room for your roots to grow, placed in communities that need your relief from pollution and toxins, and valued simply for living. Your roots may be broken, but your memory will never be uprooted.

Rachel Warner is a sophomore at Columbia College studying History and Environmental Biology.