Eucalyptus

“I love the way you look at eucalyptus trees.” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, you look like you are in a daze. You seem to be looking at more than a tree.”

“There’s something about them,” I replied, “that fascinates me, is mysterious to me. I have always liked to watch them blow, especcially the manna gums because they are billowy. They are neat in the rain going back and forth with water falling past them. But when the storm is over and fog sets in a few days later, the grayness of their leaves and the denseness of the blue gums depress me. I go from being exhilarated in a storm to being frightened in the fog. The motion of the storm makes me excited to be alive, to think of the future with confidence as I venture into the park with my umbrella, smiling as I look to the trees. In the fog the stillness gives me the heebee jeebees. Between the eerie fog and the looming trees and stillness, a lot of thoughts come to me that scare me. I don’t think of the future and how great it will be. I think of my weaknesses and fears, realizing I am not and will never be who and what I want to be.

“Tell me more about the way I look.”

“You look like you are glad they are here,” he said. “Almost everybody likes trees because they are pretty or they give shade. You look at them like you have a relationship with them. Almost like they are you or you are them.”

“I still get excited in the rain and scared in the fog,” I told him. “But some changes happened. I remember when I first saw aboriginal art or imitations of aboriginal art. Trees were made to have muscularity and sexuality. The term the crotch of the tree took on new meaning. When I’d see lush grass growing in the crotch of trees in winter and spring, especially American elms on T Street – the ones with the erotic twist – I’d laugh and shake my head.

“Where I used to see prettiness and bleakness, I saw power and sensuality. It doesn’t matter the time of year. Their power and sensuality is my even keel. I get less excited in the rain and less depressed in fog.

“A lot of trees are sensuous and look powerful, but the trunks of the eucalyptus, the way they twist and erupt from the ground are more powerful looking than others.

“This is an age when hardly anyone has power,” I continued, “yet we hear a lot of talk about feeling empowered. When I see the trunks of eucalyptus, especially the blue gums and mannas that were planted in the old days, I think of power, power, power. Not political power or ego power, but natural power I seldom let surge forth like I see surging through eucalyptus.

“That’s what I want – to feel naturally powerful and sensuous, to live my power and sensuality. We’re encouraged to be gaudy or plastic with our sexuality, not real or genuine with it.

“Remember the movie about the woman who played the piano who went to New Zealand to get married?”

He nodded.

“Remember when the white kids are playing on the eucalyptus stumps with the aboriginal kids? All the kids are humping them. The aboriginal parents are laughing as they watch their kids get sexual with the trees. The white guy gets angry seeing the white kids humping trees, so he makes them stop.

“Trees serve many purposes. That could be one of them for us, but we are afraid.”

“Wow,” he said.

“Yeah. It’s a great way for kids to get comfortable with their body and one another. I wish I had grown up like that.”

“Trees have brought up all your stuff. Haven’t they?” he said. “And not just in winter.”

“You’re right,” I admitted. “I love it. It’s not that the pain feels good. It’s that the trees bring up thoughts and feelings about myself and community, power and sex and relationships that give my life meaning and hope – that I will rise like a big rod of a eucalyptus, shedding my bark so my fear to be free gives way to my fear of what will happen if I don’t become free, especially as I get older.

“It’s interesting,” I said.

“What is?”

“These trees that are sexual and sensuous to me arrived in California in the 1850s. That was during the first third of the Victorian era, the era where people wore a lot of uncomfortable clothes and seldom expressed how they felt.

“We planted a lot of eucalyptus here in Sacramento to drain our standing water so there would not be as many mosquitos. People also thought trees would purify the air to protect us from malaria. Malaria means bad air in Italian.

“In 1877 during the heyday of the Victorian era, Sacramento planted 4000 eyucalyptus trees. That’s a lot of one species, especially in those days when our city was not big and we didn’t have gasoline powered augers to dig holes.

“It’s also interesting that at this time more and more elms were being planted. Elms would become our most loved tree, our unofficial tree, our connection to prestige and old school political power. They would be our major claim to be the City of Trees.

“It’s too bad nobody was moved by the unkemptness of the eucalyptus, their hanging foliage and long strips of peeling bar, to start a campaign to dress more loosely, to bare one’s body and soul, to erupt with genuine passion.

“They must have done for somebody then what they do for me. But they would not have been able to talk about it like I am. They could not tell people or write that trees make them horny and dying to talk about things they never talked about before – that society has everything backwards.

“It’s interesting that eucalyptus are so expressive, but their name comes from a word which means to conceal. Their seeds are concealed in a capsule. Just like our passion is bottled up.

“It’s interesting too, that the Victorian Age, as much as it created beautiful things, was a secretive age. Their art was stately and had character, but it was not expressive or seductive. At least seduction will let you in on the secret.

“That’s what is great about eucalyptus. They are expressive and seductive. I cannot think of anything as expressive as a eucalyptus tree, or so mysterious. They make me want to participate in the mystery, but I can only participate if I express. I want to express so bad because I want to participate in the mystery so bad.”

“You want to be seduced,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied. “It isn’t that I’m not assertive or aggressive. I will be more expressive and sensuous, mysterious and seductive, if I find something greater than me or you to be seduced by. It is a freedom we don’t cultivate or understand as a society.

“You’re probably thinking why I sound desperate and not free as I talk about something I love more than anything. The more I’m passionate about trees and their mystery and my expressiveness, the more I realize I’m not supposed to express sensuality or concentrate on pursuing and expressing what give my life meaning.

“It’s only partly that we aren’t supposed to say what we mean or express who we are or what we love. The greater part is that we’re supposed to be enthusiastic about an image based mainly upon money. We aren’t supposed to say what we mean, but just appear to mean something we don’t.

“Trees are freely expressing themselves. We feel we’ve gotten away with something by not revealing who we are. It’s the freedom to – freedom from controversey. Trees in the old days gave us freedom from the sun, but they didn’t make us feel free to relax and express ourselves, to shine like the sun for each other to marvel at and be warmed by.

“It’s too bad we don’t feel an affection for each other to match the love we feel for our trees. Wouldn’t it be great if the best thing about the City of Trees was the dialogues we had with each other in the shade of trees in the parking lot after work and while we planted trees together at parks and schools? At home we would look forward to talking over family business and intimacies under our trees.

“The reason trees are pretty much just something pretty and not a source of passion, conviction or intensity is because we’ve not only bottled up our passion; we’ve put our passion into false gods like money, career, property and image instead of into trees and other natural stuff.

“Our passion is our secret. We don’t know it’s there. When I see the eucalyptus trees twisting up from the ground I feel my passion bubbling, overflowing.”

“It sounds like you know it’s there,” he said, “but you don’t know what to do with it.”

“I don’t know how to express it,” I replied. “I was always told trees are just trees. They may be pretty, but they are still just trees. It’s difficult to express how I feel. It’s almost sacrilegious to.

“I think of the movie again, how the aboriginal kids were probably better able to express themselves and feel comfortable with themselves than the white kids. Think of how humuliated the white kids were. They’d never act spontaneously again. They’d fear to be laughed at if they were in a group, or punished. If they were alone they’d feel guilty about humping a tree or taking off their clothes in the forest. When they’d get home they wouldn’t tell nobody nothin’ or they’d lie if asked.”

He looked at me.

“We’re out of sync,” he said.

“I want to be in sync,” I said. “Eucalyptus became our unofficial state tree not because of our love for their beauty, but because people loooked upon them as a cash crop. It’s almost like the more we planted them to make money, the more out of sync we became. The faster and crazier and stiffer our movement, the less motion anmd fluidity and magic we saw in trees. I can tell I’m in synch the more I value trees for their expressiveness and sensuality, their power and vulnerability and sense of movement, then try to incorporate all of those into me, even though I feel awkward.

“They were planted all over – on eucalyptus farms, as property lines, as windbreaks, along train tracks. I have a theory about eucalyptus along train tracks.”

I looked at him.

“Go on ,” he said.

“Trains got rolling at the same time eucalyptus trees did. That was the 1860s. More trains came. More people came. More eucalyptus were planted for fuel for the trains and lumber to build with. But eucalyptus here didn’t work out as a building material. It wasn’t very good as fuel for trains. Eucalyptus weren’t planted as much after about 1910, but their groves remained. Trains didn’t go away either.

“I said a minute ago that our society became faster and crazier and more cumbersome in our movement at the same time we were planting more eucalyptus. Trains are a great symbol for the increased pace, the increased competition and the use of our bodies to work ourselves to death, at least spiritual death.”

“I think trains are neat,” he said.

“Me too,” I said.

“But there’s something about trains,” I continued, “that attracted people more than eucalyptus trees. People liked eucalyptus for their shade but not their sensuousness or twist or sense of motion. The trains though, were different. Trains made a lot of people money and were appreciated for that. Trains made an even greater number of people bitter. Trains broke farmers, railroad employees and helped break agricultural workers. All these broke bitter people had stiff bodies that hurt. Yet almost everybody agreed that trains sounded beautiful in the dark. There weren’t street lights in those days and people spent a lot more time outside.

“They’d listen, either living the moment as they looked to the stars or feeling in their stiff, broken, bitter, relatively young body that they’d overcome the pain and help their kids become successes. People without kids would look to the sky thanking their lucky star they didn’t have someone else to take care of. They’d wonder how long they’d hold up.

“People were mesmerized and soothed by the motion and sound and rhythm. It got them back in sync, at least as long as the trains passed, and especially at night when they run the most trains. I imagine couples would lie in bed too sore, pissed off and afraid to sleep, then snuggle for comfort when they heard a train.

“There’s the other side of trains too. When you’re outside and it rumbles by, a lot of passion rushes forth with it. You scream knowing you are going places and are going to thunder and be awesome. ‘ Yeah!’ ‘Yeah!’ ‘Yeah!’ I’ve screamed it so many times.

“You too?” I asked.

He nodded.

“They’re both about passion” I said.

“The lullaby and intensity?” he asked.

“That too,” I said. “I meant trains and eucalyptus. Trains were a romantic passion for me, a youthful passion. The passion I feel watching eucalyptus isn’t about me going places, but about expressing myself wherever I go or end up. Trains helped me get my rhythm. Eucalyptus challenge me to let myself loose.

“There’s a lot of places in the state where eucalyptus grow along the railroad tracks. I’m thinking of the peninsula and Watsonville. There’s a lot on the Amtrak runs between here and Emeryville”

“How about here?” he asked.

“Along Elvas, behind Hughes Stadium, at Sac State,” I said. “Sac State is a great place for trains. The echo is unbelievable. I loved to watch the gray engines come lurking out of the fog behind the gray eucalyptus. The problem is that a lot of the trees are being cut. In a few years they might be gone. There are replacement trees that will get just as big, but they won’t have the mystery.”

“Why are they being removed?” he asked.

“Either they’re too old or they died in the freeze in the early nineties. Maybe because they are so big and break so easy, they are considered too dangerous. The drought could have weakened them or killed them and made them vulnerable to borers. A lot of people don’t like the shedded bark from eucalyptus. Maybe the old big trees have so much litter, they just had to go.”

“Tell me about the borers,” he said.

“Well, one of the things eucalyptus lovers have liked about eucalyptus is that they are free from pests. That was pretty much true until the weather change of the 1970s. There were a lot of drought years in the seventies and eighties. Even though eucalyptus have done well in California because they are drought resistant, rain in winter is important.

“With so many years of drought, the sap – the gum – stops to flow because there is not enough water in the ground for the entire root system to produce the gum to flow to the trunk and branches. The borer takes advantage of this.

“A healty tree produces gum which prevents the borer from penetrating. The borer lays its eggs where the bark has stripped away on blue gums and mannas. So when drought comes and the trees become weak, borers have a field day. Scientists say you can hear them crunch the wood.

“It’s funny to think that eucalyptus were planted in Sacramento to drain our bogs, but we also wanted them because they would be drought resistant every summer after the bogs were drained.

“What isn’t funny is the double whammy of the freezes and droughts. Lots of damaged wood. It is a fire hazard. Remember that fire in the Oakland hills?”

He nodded.

“A lot of people who hated eucalyptus trees found an excuse with the fires to try to get eucalyptus removed and different trees planted. These people think eucalyptus are ugly and the bark a nuisance.

“Fortunately there were a couple of groups that came to the rescue of eucalyuptus. One of them was down the highway in Davis. It was called the Eucalyptus Improvement Association. Another was called POET. It means Preserve Our Eucalyptus Trees. I love the acronym because eucalyptus are poetic.

“What bothers me about people who want to destroy the eucalyptus trees is that they want them destroyed even if the trees are healthy. There are eucalyptus that don’t shed bark like the blue gum and manna do. There is a wasp that can kill the borer. Eucalyptus look pretty much the same, so even if they were healthy and did not litter, people would want them cut because they don’t like them.

“Have you ever seen a eucalyptus that grew back after it’s been cut?

“I don’t know,” he said.

“There’s some great ones growing on the south side of Land Park across from the golf course. There’s a couple of picnic tables there. You can tell the trees were cut by several trunks growing next to each other. They are beautiful.

“People who want eucalyptus cut would have to have the stumps of the healthy ones yanked out of the ground. Think of the mud slides that would happen without roots in the ground. If they don’t do that, then they’d drill holes in the stumps and pour poison in the holes.”

I stopped.

“What do you think?”

“Now I know why you have the look you do,” he said. “You struggle with yourself, but you are lucky. If the people who don’t like eucalyptus trees had them chopped down, you’d marvel at the weeds coming up in the cracks of the stumps.”

Palm trees and paradise

“What do you think of all the palm trees that are being planted around town?” he asked.

“I like them,” I said,. “California is paradise. We’re the capitol of paradise.”

“But the way they plant them,” he said. “They bring them in full grown on a truck and suddenly we have big trees.”

“It makes sense of you think about it,” I told him. “Buildings go up in three to six months where it used to take a year or more. If they can dig a huge hole for the girders, it is good they are finally digging a hole big enough for mature palm trees.

“I know what you mean. I love the old date palms. They are rich and mysterious. You can look at them for hours, look up into their darkness, linger in their shade. If you lie down and go to sleep you hear pigeions coo. At night nite birds sing love songs. It’s quite beautiful. I know a guy who doesn’t care to look at date palms, but in summer he sits on the porch at night, or walks all over where the date palms are because he loves the night birds singing in them. He says they take him to another realm.

“Date palms go with old architecture. There are lots of subtleties. New palms go with new buildings – sleek and photogenic. If somebody sees a photograph of a date palm outside a Victorian, they will think it’s neat, but they won’t think of Sacramento as paradise. If they see a photo of a shiny new building with tall palm trees outside, clouds reflected in the glass, and blue sky and mountains in the distance, they will get romantic or poetic or something. They will think how exciting it will be to drive to work and see the mountains, take the elevator to the twentieth floor, then step into their office to look all day at the Coast Range.

“The sky has a lot to do with paradise. I love the richness of the blue sky and the dreaminess of puffy clouds when I look at palm tree books. I know our sky isn’t the bluest, but on clear cold days the palm trees and sky are exquisite. On those day I feel like I am in paradise.”

“So we need more?” he asked, “so you can feel like you are in paradise?”

“We need more,” I said, “because times are changing. We aren’t planting tall trees we used to plant like elms, sycamores, eucalyuptus – the trees that shaded us and made us famous.

“We need tall palm trees to give grandeur to our city, so people can get excited looking at our city from an airplane or driving down from the Sierras. We are planting hundreds of thousands of medium size trees to shade us and provide us with something pleasing to look at. Imagine how exciting it will be to see miles of trees beneath tall palms, especially when it’s windy and clear and the subtle slopes of the Coast Range are seen acroos the valley.

“This has been an age of having an image. Even more now with computer graphics and photography. We live in a paradise that also looks like paradise if we photograph it properly.”

“What you are saying is that image is more important than substance,” he said.

“Yes.”

We looked at eaxch other.

“But not to me,” I said. “I love to be excited talking about how great we are. I love promotional photoghraphs of our city. I want an office on the twentieth floor, not so I can flatter myself with self-importance as I pull into the garage, then strut past my receptionist when the elevator opens into my office.

“I want to take a long time walking up the stair well, put my briefcase down and look out from each landing as I come up. My office on the twentieth floor will be a place I feel lucky for what we have. I’ll love our city and rivers and trees and mountains more every year.”

“What about people?” he asked.

I stopped.

“These aren’t times of affection or enthusiasm towards each other,” I told him. “We will never love each other more. We need more trees. We need clean air. Then we can lose ourselves in the trees and the passion we feel looking at the mountains.

“We have a great city for people to be in love in – the rivers, trees, mountains, our weather. That’s an angle we have not publicized. I think we are afraid to.

“I becomer sadder as I talk. You’re right. It is a shame our beautiful trees, especially palms and the paradise they represent and the future that will be theirs, don’t make me attached to people here. I love our natural stuff more each year, but feel increasing emptiness – that something isn’t right with me, you, us, our city, our times.

“It gets me mad. Part of paradise in the tropics was people’s sense of belonging. We’ve almost got the weather. We’re working on our trees. But we’ll never have the belonging they had in paradise.

“Remember I mentioned the guy who loves to listen to night birds sing in date palms? That’s what paradise is like – birds everywhere. We need big colorful birds taking off with a screech form tall palm trees.”

“That would be great to see from your office,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Then when it’s dark and I’m the last one to leave the building, I will sit at the fountain until night birds start singing from old date palms.”

“All that passion will make you sad for the people you aren’t close to in your city you love so much,” he said.

“That’s true,” I replied. “When I listen to the night birds I’ll feel sad and lucky at the same time. I’ll feel sad there is no feeling of community. I’ll feel lucky I’m one of the few who has a view of paradise.”

Orange trees in capitol park Sacramento

“What do you think of the orange trees around town?” he said.

“I love to look at them,” I said. “They make me feel peaceful when oranges are in season. Why do you ask?”

“Because I love to look at them too,” he said. “They are beautiful, but one day in Capitol Park I tried to eat one. It was horrible. I lost my inspiration.”

“I guess oranges can be like people,” I said. “They appear great, but once you get into them they might not be. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make ourselves beautiful on the outside. It means we should try to be as attractive with our personalities and souls as we are with our nice clothes. It also works the other way. If you are a wonderful person, dress like it.

“The orange trees in Capitol Park are great. They are old. All the oranges don’t taste terrible though. You just have to keep experimenting.

“I remember sitting with a 90 year old and his wife. They had just picked a plastic grocery bag full of oranges and were eating some. They do it every year. They think the oranges taste sweet. I think if they get any less sweet they would not be good.

“Looking at oranges fills me with inspiration too. In November when they get orange, it gives me hope as the days get real short. I never think of oranges as being anything but sweet. It’s a good thing to think about for Christmas. How to be sweet.

“Jesus was sweet, though we never think of him that way. Oranges are a great tonic for our bitter times and for our city which is home to all the bitterness from throughout the state.

“I wish they’d fertililze the trees so the fruit would be sweet. It would be great to have fresh squeezed orange juice at the capitol a couple of times a season. What pride and class our state would have. Our city would glory in it.

“Were you in a hurry when you ate it?” I asked.

“What?” he said.

“When I see people in the park eat an orange, they devour it, or try to. They are just hanging around the park, then they slop like they have to be somewhere and don’t have time to eat.”

“I wasn’t in a hurry,” he said. “I wanted to sit and savor it, but I was disappointed so I left.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “A lot of times I’m disappointed when I look at the oranges in December and January. They are bright and still, so peaceful in the fog. I look at them with all my bitterness and long for my peace and sweetness. I sit to make peace with myself as I marvel at the beauty of the oranges. If the sun breaks through, I think how lucky I am and how great life is.

“I think of how lucky we are to live in California. It is paradise. I mentioned that they ought to fertilize the trees to serve juice in the capitol. It would be a great way to celebrate living in paradise.”

“You’re right,” he said. “The weather here is great.”

“We’ve always known that,” I said. “In 1909 somebody in town wanted to start an Orange Day to make tourists from the east aware of how great our climate is. The plan was to plant orange groves in land visible from the railroad and orange trees at train stations.

“People would see proof our climate is mild and that our oranges taste better and ripen a month earlier than oranges in the Southland. We wanted to outdo LA, but the cultural importance of life in California had shifted from the north to the south.

“I did not find out how successful planting with a view for train travellers was. I never saw another notice of Orange Day. I see eucalyptus along train tracks and around stations. Eucalyptus look mysterious and sensual all year. Orange trees only attract when oranges are on them.

“Starting at the end of the 1800s a lot of orange trees were planted in Fair Oaks and Orangevale. In 1930 the Chamber of Commerce planned an Orange and Flower Festival. One occurred in 1931.

“That was when camellias were beginning their run to prestige and popularity. I think between our fame for our trees and the passion of camellia lovers, there wasn’t room for oranges to be glorified.”

“But we still have Capitol Park,” he said.

“Yes.”

Cottonwoods

“You don’t talk much about cottonwoods,” he said.

“I know,” I replied.

“Don’t you like them?”

“I love them,” I said.

“Well talk about them.”

“Even though they are big and beautiful,” I said. “They aren’t the trees people mean when they say the City of Trees. People think of elms and sycamores in neighborhoods.

“Cottonwoods pretty much grow along our rivers. My favorites are along the Sacramento off of 35th Avenue. So many of them growing tall with all that space for light play fit the wide expanse of river there. Everything is majestic.

“I feel I am in a different world. It’s quiet, especially when leaves flutter in the wind.

“I like to sit looking at the reflections of the trees in the shady water, then to the sky beyond the levee.

“It’s a place to live the moment, sitting with your feet in the water watching the river flow, thinking of your failures as you feel lucky to be surrounded by what is most important. You imagine you see your kids on the other side of the river standing on the levee going off to pursue their dreams, or returning from the big sky on the other side to tell you how their dreams turned out.

“You think of people who came here who couldn’t wait to see the confluence of our rivers. They’d make their way through the cottonwoods, seeing a big bend in the river in the distance, the sleepy trees and brush leaning over the water.

“They’d wonder what was ahead for them, around the next turn, why life is usually lived going upstream, if they would ever learn to flow and go where their power and beauty takes them.

“At the confluence they’d sit together. They’d see water sparkle and light play on leaves and trunks. They would wonder if people could merge like this.

“At night in summer they’d walk through the trees to where the rivers meet, turned on by the shape of the cottonwoods’ trunks. They’d smell damp earth and dry grass. ‘The kids will love it here,’ they’d whisper.

“They’d walk faster, horny from heat and hanging vines, loving crickets and the stars between trees.

“You think of what it must have been like when they saw the water through the trees, how badly they wanted to come together.

“From the edge of the trees they’d sit and talk things over, about what it means to merge, to create something basically like you but greater and more beautiful. All night they’d linger, their future twinkling in the sky. They’d watch water from the mountains ease toward them. They’d let their past flow away in the dark.

“They’d dream of giving everything they have, of being there forever for each other.

“It must have been scary, trusting on something as fickle as nature, knowing that things could not always be contained, that they would surge over the boundaries, that some years one flow would trickle and only one of you would sustain everything.

“There must have been times when they’d wander alone along one of the rivers wondering what happened, grateful for their children, walking until the stars came out, until dawn, when they were as far from the confluence as they’d ever been.

“The strong one left behind would look to the mountains for strength, asking why they all weren’t there with the mountains and rivers and trees – everything you could ask for.

“I ask myself all the time why a freeway is over the confluence, why we call the merging Discovery Park when it’s too noisy to discover love and permanence, things that are most important and we desperately need.

“I think of the weak one wandering back to the confluence, the passion they both felt as they watched the mountains, vowing to be true to themselves.

“They’d think and dream about the kids, knowing time was moving on like the rivers, hoping everybody would age like cottonwoods.

“It’s difficult,” I said, “to feel graceful like cottonwoods when I watch the river flow and see the mountains. My dreams were huge.”

City of trees

“Have we always been the City of Trees?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” I said.

“When the pioneers starated rolling in, Sacramento had trees everywhere. People valued the trees for the shade. Remember there weren’t swamp coolers or fans in those days. But they also needed trees to build and to use for fuel. A lot of people who got here didn’t have a place to live. They built fires against the trunks of the trees. That’s how big the trees were.”

“Then the trees fell over,” he said.

“I guess so,” I replied. “I guess property was damaged and people killed or injured when fires finally burnt enough of the trunk so trees fell, or were so weak when the rains and floods came they got knocked over.

“A lot of trees burned in the citywide fires of 1852 and 1854. Between the cutting and the burning, we weren’t the City of Trees we were when we started. The settlers though, needed trees for shade, even if they didn’t need to build anything else and they had a wagon to haul fuel in from somewhere. They started planting trees everywhere.

“I don’t know when we became the official City of Trees. We started getting famous for our trees in the 1880s. When C. K. McClatchy returned from Paris in 1911, he wanted to make us a city of trees like Paris.

“When I look at art from the 1800s that depicts Sacramento, the name I see is The City of the Plain. It’s a lithograph by George Baker done in 1857. The inscription under the lithograph reads:

A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF SACRAMENTO

The City of the Plain

“So he got his image from looking down from the mountains?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There weren’t airplanes. Maybe there was a three story building he viewed the valley from.

“What amazes me is his detail. The lithograph depicts the trees in town to be part of an overall tribute to the precision of city planning and commerce on a flat wilderness. Baker has the space between Sacramento and the mountains all flat. More like geometry’s plane than grassland. He considered a plain to be boring, rather than teeming with life like Indians and John Muir did.

“He makes it look like a vast distance of flat to the mountains, but it’s only ten miles to where the hills start in Orangevale.

“It seems to me he never stepped from his office to see the area a few people marveled at. There’s another bird’s-eye view of Sacramento done in 1870. I don’t think Baker did it, but the same sense of emptiness between town and the mountains exist. The two lithographs captured the boredom of the rice fields in the next century, rather than the home of wildflowers and buzzing bees that Muir walked through and lusted over and slept in.

“I like a painting done in 1849 by George Cooper. It has a lot of trees towering above buildings. Through the trees are the mountains. The painting is exciting and mysterious. It makes me think of how neat it would have been to live here and be part of the adventure.

“The lithographs of 1857 and 1870 make me feel that Sacramento would have been a great place to watch the mountains but a boring place to live.”

“Or the sky,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Without any trees, the sky would have been more important,” he said. “People would have been forced to watch it.”

“There’s a guy who agrees with what you said,” I said.

“There is?”

“Yes.”

“Go on,” he told me.

“He wrote an article in a local weekly paper in the 1980s. He said the old timers planted trees so they would not have to see the sky and be overwhelmed by God. I think he was saying that all the talk about God that the pioneers brought with them was put to the test after they destroyed the trees and had to look up and see God go up and out forever. It scared the shit out of them.”

“Kind of like you’re implying the grassland scared Baker,” he said.

“Right,” I said.

“So they planted trees to forget about their fear?”

“That’s what I think he was saying,” I said.

“What do you think?”

“What do I think?”

“Yeah.”

“I think people feared the plains and the sky. The fear they had from crossing the Great Plains and sailing on the ocean they brought with them here. I think they liked the sky at night, but the vast sky in the daytime was too much. It’s too bad. The Sioux saw the prairie as divine. The ancient Athenians loved to look at the vast sky and the ocean from their city. The ancient Irish saw spirits in trees. We didn’t see trees as divine when we cut them or when we planted them.

“We had it all going for us. Except for the fifteen years between 1855 and 1870, there were good sized trees. If you lost interest in looking at the trees, you could walk to the edge of town and climb one to look out at our great grassland and the mountains and peep through a space between branches to the sky. God was everywhere.

“I see God everywhere like the Spaniards wanted to name something after the Blessed Sacrament. The Spaniards didn’t see nature as divine, but they loved God. They were on the right track when they gave us a sacred name. Of all our names – The City of the Plain, City of Trees, River City, Capitol City, Camellia City – Sacramento is our best. What we need to do is adopt a sacred outlook to go with our sacred name. We can pray to our rivers and use the grass under oak trees as places to make love and have a baby.”

“And look up to the sky together when we finish doing it to thank God for life,” he said.

“Yes,” I choked.

“It sounds great,” he said. “How will you get it to happen?”

“I won’t,” I said. “But think of this.”

“What?”

“We can’t focus on rivers or trees because they are right here for us to touch and linger with. We don’t know how to touch or linger. We’re always reaching for the future. A view of the sky and the mountains symbolizes the future. The sky is limitless like the future. The mountains are monumental like we hope our future is.

“You can’t walk to the edge of town anymore to climb a tree to look to the mountains and all that sky between us and them. What you can do though is find a building with a view. If you work in a big office building you can walk out to the hall during break and look to the sky and mountains aching for your retirement. If you’re way up on one of the top floors where you can see the rivers and a few miles of trees too, you might feel magical, that life is really pretty good and your kids will be rich and famous like the mountains and all your grand kids will have a blast playing in our urban forest.

“We’re a city of everything. We always have been. That’s where our potential lies, in allowing everybody a view of what we have – our mountains, trees, rivers, the sky, the valley.

“We have the relatively new justice building. Supposedly the grand view is for the jurists, not reserved for the judges. Our next steps are to move the five floors of our library to the twenty-sixth to thirtieth floors of the newest skyscraper. Then we can have public parks on the roofs of future skyscrapers. Everybody who wanted a grand view could have one.”

“It sounds like you don’t get a view,” he said.

“The only view I’ve had was when I went to Sac State,” I said. “On my way to talk with my professors, I’d stand in the hall if it was winter and look to the mountains. It was beautiful.

“I didn’t think of my future though, of having a cabin in the mountains; a penthouse apartment; a private office with a view from the top. I thought of the past, when the air was clear and there were no suburbs and I could walk all over the valley and up into the Loomis Basin.

“Even in the old days,” I continued, “people didn’t focus on walking. They rode a horse, or on a wagon or buggy, a riverboat or train. Today we ride in cars. Our name the City of Trees would mean more if we walked. We could have a mystical passionate image of our city from walking and wondering, rather than a teenage lust to put Sacramento on the map that we have now.”

“But we don’t walk,” he said.

“No we don’t. It’s too bad because walking is one of the most important things if a city wants to be great or magical. With all our trees you’d think people would be walking around filled with wonder or excitement, but like you say, we aren’t.”

“So how do you get to see everything?” he asked.

“I don’t,” I said. “I take what I get. When I lived in Midtown I’d take the bus to see a friend off of 65th near Fruitridge. It was too far to walk, especially with all the cars and few trees.

“The ride through the old part of town and past Land Park is pretty with all the trees. Then you get to the end of the park and look south to all that sky. On clear days it’s great.

“I loved going out there in February and March when it’s clear and windy. I d get off the bus at 65th. As I crossed the street I’d look to my right and left – the Sierras looming bright white and the Coast Range a dreamy silhouette.

“When I got across the street I’d walk real slow past the cemetery to watch the spring grass blow. I’d stop and look. Then I’d start walking, turning to the sky to the south, then to the Sierras. When I got to the corner to turn off, I’d stop and gaze back to the Coast Range.”

“What about the rivers?” he asked.

“I get there when I can,” I said. “The bus ride through the trees, then out to all that sky and the views across the valley and to the mountains was and is beautiful. I feel lucky.”

Italian pines

“Do you ever get downtown?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I like to go to Capitol Park and look at the trees.”

“Which ones?”

“Italian Pines and Deodar Cedars,” I said. “Why’d you ask?”

“Because I was coming out of the candy shop on L Street across from the capitol. I noticed a beautiful tree across the street. I stopped chewing my candy to look because I was shook up. I walked over to see it. There was a sign on it like on other trees. I worte the name down – Pinus pinea – Italian Stone Pine – then I put my note pad away and looked for a long time. I touched it. When I didn’t think anyone was looking, I kissed it because it was beautiful to me. I was in a daze the rest of the day. At home I started to tell my wife about it but I started to cry. ‘They’re so beautiful and muscular!’ I cried. I couldn’t go on.”

“They fill me with passion too,” I said. “I know what you mean about trees being muscular. When I look at how bulging and powerful and peaceful Italian Pines are, I become aware of traffic on L Street. I feel and see all this power and motion, but traffic has no beauty and no peace. Even on weekends when it’s slow, there’s an uneasy stillness from the ugly buildings on L Street.

“I get sad like you do. I never had the courage to tell someone and to cry to them about it.

“There have been times I couldn’t look at them because they make me aware of peace I don’t have and power and beauty I am afraid to use.

“I watch people during lunch walk by the pines without looking at them. The Deodar Cedars you can’t help but see. The Italian Pines, even though they are huge, are easy to not pay attention to.

“I’m sure there are people who love them like us. A lot of people probably struggle with themselves as they see the beautiful powerful trees, knowing they have to return to the office to have their spirit murdered. They want to quit work to be free, but know they can’t. The trees keep them alive, yet they become more and more aware they’re dying a slow death. There are probably days they can’t bear to look, just like a man without a lover sometimes can’t look at somebody beautiful.

“There’s always somebody who loves their job, who can look at the pines and be aware of life’s preciousness, then allow it to make them love their job more.

“What did your wife say?”

“She cried with me. It isn’t that she loves trees. After we stopped crying she said, ‘That’s how I felt when I had the kids.’ We cried after that too. We hugged longer than we we ever have.”

“The guy who planted the pines,” I said. “I wonder what he felt?”

“What do you mean?”

“B.B. Redding. He was married with kids. He was mayor here in 1856. He was a philosopher, statesman, theologian and scientist. In 1870 his doctor told him he was working too hard and needed a vacation. He and his wife went to Europe. In Italy they saw Italian Pines.

“Being in a country with all that culture and history, and seeing those beautiful trees, must have moved him like they do me and you. He had vision to bring specimens back to plant around the perimeter of the capitol. There are only a few left. I guess he thought their grandeur would suit the elegance of the capitol. He was right.

“I wonder, since he was getting older and needed to restore his health, how much he realized he could never express and never feel when he saw the trees. It’s kind of a tease. Feeling greatness we can never attain, but wanting to experience it anyway and wanting other pople to experience it. What’s great about Redding is he lived a dynamic life and was a great man. I guess he thought the rest of us could be inspired to be great in our areas of interest and with our personality.”

We paused.

“You know the buildings across Tenth Street from the capitol, the ones with the quotations that are profound?”

He nodded.

“The buildings were constructed after Redding died. It’s too bad because he lived the quotations. One of the quotations is Bring Me Men to Match My Mountains. The other is Into the Highlands of the Mind Let Me Go.”

“Are those from ancient times?” he asked.

“They’re from modern poets,” I said. “I think it was masterful planning to plant Deodar Cedars on the front lawn of the capitol, then construct two grandiose buildings across from them. After looking at the two buildings and being jazzed reading the quotations, you become more inspired walking over to the capitol with the gigantic cedars from India, a place with more and bigger mountains than we have.”

“It’s a little overwhelming. Isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “The elegance of the three buildings; the eloquence of the quotations; the majesty of the cedars and the beauty, peace and power of the pines probably makes a lot of people afraid to set goals because we know we could not come close to what we just saw and felt.

“But I think there’s more to this than that. The buildings and quotations appeal to our ego. We see the buildings and wish we were a Greek or Roman or southern aristocrat. We read the quotations and we want to be great because we know there are only a few people like Redding who match the mountains and get into the highlands of the mind.

“The trees, as humbling as they are, play second fiddle to the buildings. Our tremendous passion to express, be ourselves and be free is overwhelmed by our desire to compete and be better than.

“It would have been better for everybody if the buildings had different quotations. If one building read Speak Your Truth and Only Your Truth, and the other read Listen to Your Neighbors Truth, we would all feel free and powerful at the same time we felt part of the community. There are a few people like Redding who will stand out among their contemporaries no matter what, but the important thing is for everyone to feel part of a community. We don’t have that.

“Imagine reading quotations like those I made up. It’s a healthier challenge to accept ourselves for who we are than to try to be great beyond our abilities. We’re unhealthy because we refuse to live our truth.

“You know that row of ugly buildings on L Street?”

He nodded.

“They stand for the grandeur we don’t live and the passion and expressiveness we deny. We can’t live the stateliness that we see in the capitol and the two buildings on Tenth Street, but we easily live the lifelessness and constraint of the ugly buildings.

“It’s a struggle for me,” I continued. “When I see the quotes on the buildings I want to be great, to be an important person who knows everybody at the capitol. When I see the trees, I feel I am not livng my passion and beauty, or if I’m confident, I’m inspired to continue to live my truth and be my self. The ugly buildings make me rage because they aren’t great, scare me because they are ugly and make me sad because they stifle my freedom and expression.”

We paused.

“I don’t know what I’ll do when the last of the Italian Pines blows over or is cut down.”

“We can plant new ones,” he said, “Like Mr. Redding did for us.”

Sycamores

“Sycamores are one of the prettiest trees in Sacramento,” he said.

“Most everybody feels the same way,” I told him. “The trees are all over Midtown, East Sac, Land Park and Curtis Park.”

“I think they come from London.”

“Some do. Some are native to California,” I said. “Sycamores grew along the banks of our rivers. They were here when Sutter came.”

“So they left the sycamores along the river and planted the trees from London in town?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“Well what happened?”

“There were a lot of trees along the shores of the river where the people who came after Sutter settled. In 1847 a guy wrote in his diary that Sacramento was ‘a town in the woods, with the native trees still waving over its roofs.’

“But people cut trees for wood and built fires against the trunks of others. Finally in 1853, the last tree that was native to the plain came down. It was on oak.”

“Then they started planting more natives?” he asked.

“No,” I said. Actually they planted Calilfornia Sycamores in 1850, way out of town at Sutter’s Fort Burying Ground where Sutter Middle School is now on I and Alhambra.

“Sutter gave up ownership of the land in 1849 and 1850. Dr. R. H. McDonald bought the land. He named the cemetary New Helvitia Cemetery. New Helvitia means New Switzerland. Sutter came from Switzerland.”

“So Dr. McDonald planted the trees?”

“Nobody seems to know. But we know that the trees on the school’s lawn at the corner of Alhambra and I are the oldest in town. McDonald could have had them officially planted, or someone who had a loved one buried there could have planted them.

“There was a lot going on. A nursery owner named James Warren was selling non-native trees to replace the natives that had been cut or burned down in town. Over at the graveyard beyond Sutter’s Fort, the guy who bought the land from McDonald in 1857, J.W. Reeves, made a beautiful cemetery with trees and shrubs and flowers. The cemetery went all the way to H Street.

“Cemeteries were a big thing in those days. According to Gary Wills, they were considered parks where the living could go and commune with the dead, themselves and nature. Cemeteries were on the edge of town not just for health reasons, but as a symbolic meaning that death is the end of one world and the beginning of another. At the edge of town in the graveyard, the living were in a spot between both worlds looking out to the wilderness, wondering where their loved ones were and what their own death would bring.

“In 1875 the City gained ownership of the cemetery. From then on it was maintained less and less. After 1912 hardly anyone was buried.

“In 1908, the people who had moved out that way wanted to increase the value of their property. They eventually got the cemetery planted in grass so it would look better, and not so much like a cemetery.”

“And of course the sycamores kept growing?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “I find it interesting that somethng intended to be sacred could become an eyesore and a nuisance in just thirty years.

“While the property owners wanted walls, shrubbery and trees removed from the graveyard, people in Midtown between B and H and 21st and 23rd started planting London Sycamores. That was around 1910.

“The London Sycamores look better than the California ones. They grow taller and fuller. Nevertheless, next time you’re backed up on Alhambra waiting for the light on H or J to change, look to the trunks of the big California Sycamores on the corner of the lawn at I Street. They are beautiful. If traffic’s slow enough, you can sit through a couple of lights and really get an appreciation for the trunks subltleties.”

“So in spite of development, sycamores still stand above everything like they were planted to do?”

“A lot of them have been cut for skyscrapers,” I replied. “Even where they’ve been allowed to remain, it’s hard to notice them because the buildings are real tall.

“There is an intriguing one on the southeast side of the Wells Fargo Building. It leans way out into the street. It breaks up the orderly row of trees and the rigidity of the two tall buildings. I noticed it when I was walking from the parking lot. Even though I was going to be late for my meeting, I decided to sit on one of the benches and look at the tree.

“It got me thinking about the present – what a great city we have. It got me thinking about the future – how important it is to keep our old sycamores so we can enjoy them, and how important it is to plant new ones so they will be tall when the old ones come down.”