Call Me A Tree Hugger

Across the Fence #334

The trees were alive with the sound of birds singing as I walked down Sherpe Road this weekend. It was cool, but sunny, and they were enjoying the advent of warmer weather as much as I was. It made me sad to think that very soon I won’t see and hear any birds singing in those trees. There are major changes blowing in the wind.

All those trees that line both sides of Sherpe Road along Highway 14 will soon be gone. Construction, I call it destruction, of a four-lane highway between Westby and Viroqua has begun. A perfectly good two-lane highway connects the two cities now.

Almost everyone I’ve talked to says the four-lane is a big waste of money and not needed. We’re talking about a 4.5-mile stretch of new road that’s costing over 16 million dollars, and destroying many farms and homes to make way for the two extra lanes and a bike path along side the highway. It’s also destroying a lot of habitat for animals and birds.

As with all projects like this, and it could one day happen where you live, the only people affected are those along any new highway construction, who have lost their land and homes. No one else seems to care. That’s just the nature of the beast. When I’ve mentioned to people that all the trees along our road will be destroyed, a few have said, “They’re just trees, plant some new ones.”

Call me a tree hugger if you want, but I look at them in a different light. Those trees and brush are home to countless birds and wild critters. I don’t know when the cutting and destruction of the trees will begin, but I hope it’s before the birds lay their eggs, or the nests and eggs will be destroyed in the process. The poem, “Trees,” by Joyce Kilmer has the line, “A tree that may in summer wear a nest of robins in her hair,” applies to those trees. During my walks in the spring and summer, I’ve counted over twenty robins at a time, filling those trees and singing. It was a great nesting place for them and many types of other birds. It wasn’t unusual to see a deer and fawn come out of the trees and brush, stand and look at me for a while, and then head back into the safety and seclusion they found there. Those are encounters that only someone who loves nature can truly appreciate. They are simple pleasures and moments that you can’t buy.

In winter I’ve seen those trees bare, with each branch capped by a layer of snow; I’ve enjoyed watching them come alive again each spring; I’ve seen them decked out in their finest summer foliage; In the fall, I’ve watched them change into their coats of many colors; and I’ve marveled at the beauty of the entire lane, especially the pines, adorned with hoarfrost. Simple pleasures, available every season of the year, to anyone who seeks them out.

Among the trees are wild blackberry bushes and plum trees that will also be destroyed. Those plums made some really good jam.

Smith School, where I spent eight years, is already gone. That was in the way of the new highway too. It now lives only in the memories of those who received their education there. I remember walking to and from school when Highway 14 was being widened and straightened in the 1950s. A bunch of us neighbor kids would walk together each day and stop to play, in and on, the large culverts before they were put in place. We watched the large earthmovers carve openings through the hills to provide fill for the valleys to make the road level. It never occurred to me in my youth that in the construction there was also destruction. What must the Ostrem family that lived along the highway near us have felt, when their entire farm was destroyed to make way for the highway? Many of the trees that will now be destroyed are all that remain from that farm.

I mentioned that a bike path is being constructed alongside the highway. It’s too bad that someone didn’t have the foresight to make the old Milwaukee Road right-of-way a bike path when rail service to the area was abandoned. We used to walk the rails when I was young, and it would have been an absolutely scenic route with minor grades that could have gone from Viroqua, through Westby, down through Spring Coulee to Coon Valley, and down toward the Mississippi River. The other spur headed to Sparta and could have joined the Elroy-Sparta trail. It would have attracted bikers from all over Wisconsin and beyond as a scenic bike route. It would have been much better than biking along a four-lane highway. It’s going to be hard to stop and listen to the wind rustling through the trees with traffic whizzing by.

There’s a poem titled “Trees Against the Sky” by Robert William Service. Here is part of it: Trees, trees against the sky - O I have loved them well! There are pleasures you cannot buy, Treasures you cannot sell, And not the smallest of these, Is the gift and glory of trees…

Call me a tree hugger if you want, but in the story of my life, this is another page.