The Future: Gene Logsdon Is Optimistic

April 2013

That’s what I keep reminding myself as I drive along Leelanau County roads this spring, my eye continually drawn to ravaged ash trees. The emerald ash borer only reached us this past year, but now it is clear that large numbers have arrived, with appetites intact. What Fall 2013 will look like without the subtle, varied, yummy colors of ash leaves? Will the species recover? Gene Logsdon, as I say, is optimistic, and while I’ve written about Logsdon and ash trees before, here is his hopeful forecast again, from A Sanctuary of Trees, for those who don’t want to follow my link backwards.

I have enough dead ashes in my woodland to supply all the firewood I will need for the rest of my life. But when foresters and landscapers tell me to kiss the white ash goodby, I lead them by the nose into my woods. Right along the path to the barn, there are two patches of ash seedlings – scores of them. I exchange greetings with them several times a day. They are my good friends. The tallest of them is about five feet now, growing slowly in the partial shade, the top sprig nipped off last winter by a deer, but none the worse for it. It is three years old and still only the diameter of my finger. Obviously it is not yet old enough to interest a borer. It will take six to eight years anyway for these seedlings to reach borer-food size, during which time the borers, running out of bigger ashes, will start to starve. I hope.

Another thing I tell myself over and over and have voiced once or twice to David, also, is that I’m glad I started noticing the fall colors of the ash trees a few years back. What if I’d not been aware of them, if their glory had vanished and I’d never known it?

October 2012

But according to Logsdon, it is not too late. If there are no tall, stately ash trees adding their fall color to October’s landscape, look carefully along the roadsides and around the edges of the woods. Look for the whippersnappers. Those little darlings! In time – we may hope, along with Logsdon – they will be tall, stately trees themselves.

Look to the young of our own species, too, for when we are gone, it will be their world. What kind of world will they inherit from us? Here is the Leelanau Children's Center in Northport, on parade Friday, April 26.

"Day of the Young Child"

The days are getting longer. Morning comes early. It’s spring, and it’s good to be alive. Don't you feel a little younger today, no matter how old you are?

Wild leeks in the woods

Ashes to Ashes

Ash trees are the supernumeraries on the autumn stage. Sugar maples, with their brilliant reds and oranges, are the stars, with supporting roles played by bright yellow birch and tamarack and the scarlet of sumac. Willows are not spectacular in color but commanding and familiar to us in size and form, so we notice them daily. Amid the showier species, the ash often registers only subconsciously, but if all the ash trees were to be subtracted from the stage, how we should miss them!

The beauty of the ash trees’ color lies not in traffic-stopping brightness but in subtlety and range. Autumn always seems to my eye the most deliciously edible of seasons, and ash colors beg to be tasted, from creamy butterscotch tones through toast brown to pomegranate red. There are purples as deep and rich as the skins of plums and aubergines and tropical fruit colors, too--banana, pineapple, persimmon.

Many, many years of my life slipped by before I noticed ash trees at all. Belatedly but suddenly, or so it seemed, one fall I began noticing certain saplings by the side of the road. What were they, anyway? So lovely! Once they had caught my eye, I saw them everywhere. It took a while longer for me to notice mature trees with the same leaves, the same exquisite autumn jewel colors, but now I see them everywhere.

I know what you’re all thinking, those of you already savvy about ash trees. The dreaded emerald ash borer! Will the borers be the death of the species? Will the stage of the future be missing the contributions of the ash? Gene Logsdon, in A Sanctuary of Trees, has a more optimistic forecast. He notes, in his own woodlot,

...white ash trees that are dying all over the place from the emerald ash borer. I have enough dead ashes in my woodland to supply all the firewood I will need for the rest of my life. But when foresters and landscapers tell me to kiss the white ash goodbye, I lead them by the nose into my woods. Right along the path to the barn, there are two patches of ash seedlings—scores of them. I exchange greetings with them several times a day. They are my good friends. The tallest of them is about five feet now, growing slowly in the partial shade, the top sprig nipped off last winter by a deer, but none the worse for it. It is three years old and still only the diameter of my finger. Obviously it is not yet old enough to interest a borer. It will take six to eight years anyway for these seedlings to reach borer-food size, during which time the borers, running out of bigger ashes, will start to starve. I hope.

Nature does not hold still. Life does not hold still. Even without human interference, the landscape would change constantly, from one season to the next, one year to the next. It is our miraculous and unearned good fortune to live for a while amid our contemporary species, all of us just here for a while.