The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Man's Friendly Landscape We human beings are able to live and carry on our operations here on this little bullet we call earth largely because of...
...From where I was sitting, it struck me that the houses were pretty much alike, almost uniform...
...The trees impressed me by their beauty, the houses by their ugliness...
...National and state parks and forests have been set aside simply for their natural beauty...
...The value of trees has even come in for a certain amount of official recognition...
...The largest, those with the greatest competitive spirit, had burst out and developed their natural forms in the freedom of the upper air...
...But not so the trees...
...They are at last coming to recognize that trees supply shade in the summer, protect and humanize our homes and playgrounds and preserve the water supply that helps to furnish the very basis of life...
...And now they are still here, furnishing beauty and shade to the descendants of the original planters...
...Trees originally covered a great part of this continent...
...When white men first came here, the forests extended almost to the Mississippi River, and were gaining on the bare prairie at the rate of roughly a mile a year...
...In some places the enmity against trees seems to have survived unto the present day...
...As I looked down, the landscape was green except where here and there it had been penetrated by the roof of some old house...
...It is to be hoped that in time the Eastern lumbermen will learn to imitate them...
...These thoughts came to me the other day while sitting near a window in an apartment on one of the top floors of a high building...
...These trees had been planted, cared for, loved and protected for generations...
...and when the wind blew each was twisted and turned into several variations on the original design...
...Every time someone proposes that the nation preserve a fine section of landscape for the sake of beauty or for use during leisure time, some lumberman or other is sure to appear before a Congressional committee to point out all the money that can be made by leveling every tree in sight...
...Trees were in the way...
...Indeed, whenever the real estate men decide to erect one of their so-called "developments" they begin by killing off everything that grows...
...We have enemies, too, though in the long run they are beaten back, and through our encouragement our friends win out...
...If they do, it will be one of the most intelligent cases of selfishness on record...
...Many of the trees were tall and magnificent...
...Yet, with all these discouraging facts, I am beginning to see signs of improvement...
...Similarly, when the public authorities go slashing away to build a freeway or thruway or turnpike-or whatever they call itevery tree must bow the knee to make way...
...They had lived, it occurred to me, through much of our rather disgraceful dealings with their kind...
...Thus, in the Middle West and the West, vast stretches of forest have been razed and nothing planted in their place...
...And now I am told that the great lumbermen out West are carrying on a campaign to promote, expand and protect our forests...
...Maples, pines, oaks had to be destroyed before farms could be built and crops raised...
...Every great city has been made into a sort of desert...
...In the fight for space, each tree had taken on its own unique design...
...People seem to be grasping the idea tiiat trees can do more than give us the necessary supply of lumber for some future day...
...They had obviously been planted years ago as ornaments to what must have been aristocratic old homes...
...I was well above the trees and the town's other buildings...
...But in the early days people seemed to develop an enmity for them...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Man's Friendly Landscape We human beings are able to live and carry on our operations here on this little bullet we call earth largely because of countless plants and animals which act as our allies...
...The whole landscape seemed fluid and alive, endlessly changing before my eyes...
...As a boy in Ohio I can recall hearing farmers tell how they wouldn't have a wild tree on their place for anything...
...For 50 or 60 years-perhaps even longerthey have competed for the limited space at their disposal...
Vol. 45 • October 1962 • No. 21
