We create our own environment. Fort Worth was established in June 1849 as a small Army outpost. Dallas started out as a small trading post in 1841. In roughly 185 years or so, the two cities blossomed into vibrant, desirable, economically powerful, beautiful cities. Both cities began as simple dreams. What is small can grow into something grand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of our most prominent 19th-century writers, wrote in one of his famous essays, “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” Texas has an extraordinary commitment to enhancing the environment with trees. From small ideas to becoming a million trees.
When I first came to Texas, I didn’t realize people actively seek shade, especially when parking their cars.
Trees are far more appreciated in Texas than in any other place where I have been in the country. The East Coast, where I live, is one huge tree canopy. Texas, however, is a wide quilt: the western part of the state is made up of prairies and arid lands with fewer trees than the heavily forested eastern part of the state. Texas has many organizations dedicated to trees, or what the poet Khalil Gibran called “poems that the earth writes on the sky.”
Texas A&M Forest Service assists landowners and helps manage and conserve forest resources by ensuring forests remain productive and healthy.
Opinion
H-E-B is not only one of the most highly regarded retail chains in the Southwest. The company, through its program Trees for Texans, is also a significant advocate for tree planting and increasing the beauty of the communities it serves.
Texas Trees Foundation is dedicated to improving the health of people and cities simply by planting trees. Urban trees create shade islands; rural trees enhance the possibilities of swings and laughter.
I wonder if all these organizations ever had a convention to share overlapping goals and to celebrate their good work.
In January, sanitation departments all over the country gather used Christmas trees that have been dragged to the curb at the end of the holiday season. Last year, my son Michael had an idea. He and his 6-year-old son, Finnian, went around the neighborhood and gathered 10 or 15 Christmas trees, then Michael made a stand for each one and “planted” a small pine tree forest in the backyard for Finnian and for his 3-year-old sister, Indigo.
The backyard was transformed into a miniature forest from Narnia, a magical place where the two children laughed, ran between the trees, played hide-and-seek and reveled in the delight of this incongruous place that appeared in their lives.
Toward the end of C.S. Lewis’ novel, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he wrote this about the children in his adventure: “If ever they remembered their life in this world, it was as one remembers a dream.”
I believe my grandchildren will long remember what it was like to run through the enchanted forest their father created for them. I believe all children in Texas will well remember the beauty of Texan trees that so many organizations planted for them.
We need to plant an environment where dreams are possible and where dreams are remembered.
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