Poem: The Giant Black Walnut Tree
Photo: Lauren Mills
Tree killers,tree harvesters
They came at 8 and didn’t leave till 5
They came and harnessed a tree wrapped ropes around the black walnut branches, limb by limb the tree disappeared from the sky no racoon home today he got the memo
Can you make a home for him can you be a branch for a bird to rest on? Can you live to be 200 years old?
What I saw yesterday was a killing man and his machines overpowering a tree that we will never see again and it was our tree it was part of our everyday at Butternut Farm how long did it take for that tree to grow that tall?
Memories saying hello when passing the black walnut tree
His knots and ties were a surgical precision the eyes have it we see all of it but what can we do?
After standing for a 100 years and more
Don’t you have rights? A whole complex built around a black walnut tree and then you cut it down without any explanation. Was the tree dying?
It was in the way? Do I have a say in how long I am here? Why do you cut us down?
Grind my branches, sing a song for me. Remember me.Plant new trees sounds like just have another baby, try again. Maybe someday we will get it right
Lauren Mills
Thank you so much for including my poem in the Indy. I would like to turn this moment of sadness into finding ways to protect longstanding trees that are part of the visible landscape, even those on managed property. I hope this poem makes people in Amherst think about how we can better protect our outside environment.
LM
It’s sad but that tree was dangerous — look at the top picture and you can see the rot in the middle, and you can see it going up the side of the top log on the truck. Sooner or later — likely sooner — the tree would have split in half, with tons and tons of tree falling out of the sky. Possibly killing someone — it happens.
The problem is that the 1938 Hurricane took out most of the then-large trees in Amherst so you now have the ones that had been planted in the 1920s and then the ones planted by the WPA (1939-1941) to replace the ones lost to the hurricane. They’re now all old & dying. They’re coming down soon — either with a chain saw or gust of wind but they are definitely coming down soon. And many already have — the Maples along Lincoln Ave, the Oaks along Kellogg Ave — although I’ll never forget when one of the Oaks on Kellogg came down in a thunderstorm, bringing a pole and transformer along with it. It’s only 8,700 volts to ground, memory is that the transformer also exploded…
The solution is to plant more trees!!!
I’d petition management to plant four new trees — it’s not an unreasonable request.
New to the town…where was this great black walnut tree? Thanks in advance and thanks for the visual poem, and thanks to Ed for the tree history.
The tree was on the Butternut Farm apartments property managed by Wayfinders. The management did not inform us why the tree was being removed, unfortunately,there could be more than one reason. Black walnut wood is a valuable wood,that could be another reason for removing the tree. What are they going to do about the black fence? There should be more knowledge about the trees.when they cut the tree it was not hollow. As you can see from the pictures the young people were all watching. Some neighbors said oh a tree branch fell on me, or the black wants dinged my car, we find ways to justify what happened.
LM
happy solar eclipse 2024!