It was a narrow short lane and served as the floor under an arc of tree branches connecting canopies across the divide. Then one day, apparently without asking anyone if they cared, the city sliced away one side of the tunnel's embrace, and widened, paved, and transformed the little lane into a roadway.
We learn, oftentimes the hard way, that "If you build it, they will come. " And, indeed they did. The lane that became a road became a cut-through, and at times, a raceway. It opened a dog-leg link between one major road over to another, funneling heavy traffic through an old established neighborhood. And, as is the case in neighborhoods everywhere, the traffic changed how it felt to live there.
Wounded from the tree removal, the neighbors clearly and firmly let the city know with an explicit "put them back!" that they were not happy. So in a joint effort, the city, which provided small trees, and the neighbors, who added their labor, planted Cross Avenue's next generation of overstory. But as anyone, including children, who has tried to grow anything knows, birthing is the easy part. The hard part comes over decades of raising your charge to adulthood.
A city water spigot was installed and a family living close by provided a hose that had to be hauled the entire length of the city block. They and others watered, mulched, staked and protected those trees for years to get them off to a good start, accounting for hundreds of hours of free nurturing care. Frequent and slow-soak watering as well as organizing equipment and workers for mulching are very time- and labor-consuming jobs.
As the years passed, some of the young plantings were run over or damaged, but they were replaced and the road slowly has begun to feel more like a lane again. The trees have reached a height and width that give drivers a sense of enclosure, which could help limit more excessive driving behaviors. And finally, the maturing branches are beginning to flirt with the older trees across the road, perhaps to join them in a few more years to again form a tree tunnel.
This story has spanned a quarter of a century and as with most stories, this one has an element of threat and danger. Developers who own the land bordering the treed lane want to put parking spaces in front of their proposed homes, a disruption that would destroy about half of the trees because the spaces would be in the public right-of-way area, where their root systems live. Private use of public space is not a fair trade against the history of this place.
Once again the neighbors have come to the defense of what they want for their surroundings, and to save a 25-year investment they made in this part of our city. The trees' fate might be decided at the next Planning Commission meeting at Fayetteville City Hall, 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 25, when this issue, which was tabled last week, may come up again.
As tree preservation efforts have evolved over the decades in Fayetteville, I think the most prevalent problem is that our planners, developers, alderman and citizens still do not understand nor do they treat urban tree canopy as a public utility, which serves the entire town. Some consider trees on their property as decorative objects or as shade providers or windbreaks. Rarely do homeowners praise their trees as oxygen producers and carbon sponges or first lines of defense against run-off, flooding and soil erosion. We do not realize the work they do keeping our town cooler and decreasing energy costs by shading roofs and pavement. Crucially, plants hold water on the land long enough for it to soak in and recharge our water table, a supply without which the region's economy would be in serious trouble.
The city's 2019 Urban Forestry Report (https://www.fayetteville-ar.gov/DocumentCenter/View/18747/2019-Urban-Forest-Report) points out that from 2016 through 2018, our average yearly canopy loss was 57 acres. Do the math on what this means to us as our town sacrifices trees to development: "One acre of forest absorbs six tons of carbon dioxide and puts out four tons of oxygen. This oxygen output is enough to meet the annual needs of 18 people," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Trees represent years. When they are cut, we lose those years. By defending trees, even a few on Cross Avenue, we are protecting the time it takes to safeguard the health of a city.
Commentary on 11/19/2019