Dr. Johnson was pleased, when I shewed him some venerable old trees, under the shade of which my ancestors had walked. He exhorted me to plant assiduously, as my father had done to a great extent.

— James Boswell’s “Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”
 

I think that I shall never see an editorial as lovely as a tree.

But I’m writing one anyway, not just in celebration of the beauty of trees, as Joyce Kilmer so famously wrote in 1913 — A tree that may in Summer wear/ A nest of robins in her hair;/ Upon whose bosom snow has lain;/ Who intimately lives with rain — but of their worth.

The subject came to mind because of a kerfuffle at Altamont’s September village board meeting. A few weeks back, we’d published a letter from Jerry Oliver, upset to wake one morning to the jarring sound of a chainsaw. He found men cutting down the 30-year-old silver maple shade tree his father had planted for him just before he died.

Clearly, trees can have sentimental value. We often plant them in honor of people who have died, as living memorials.

Oliver hadn’t been notified that the historic bluestone sidewalk, admittedly narrow and uneven in places, running along the Grand Street edge of his yard was to be replaced by a new cement one, better able to accommodate a wheelchair or an unsteady walker.

We have in this space lauded the importance of sidewalks, which link a community and improve health as well. We’ve praised Altamont’s sidewalk program, gradually including parts of the village that had no walks. But we believe that the existence of a wide and smooth cement sidewalk on the other side of Grand Street should have made uprooting the historic sidewalk unnecessary.

We also believe that, when the village plans projects within its right-of-way, property owners should be notified in advance, and so we are pleased that the mayor says that will be the procedure going forward.

At the September village board meeting, the trustees heard complaints that went beyond the lack of notification. Most notably, Grand Street resident John Sands lamented the felling of six more trees on his street.

Sands, who works as a landscape architect, is well known in the village for providing natural scenic decorations — baskets of flowers hanging from utility poles in the summer and pine swags decorating them in the winter. He estimates that, over the past three decades, Altamont has gotten $100,000 worth of free services from him. On our pages, we’ve likened him to Santa Claus.

A decade ago, Sands went before the village board to say that, since he had lived on Grand Street, the village had cut 19 trees. He then issued the board a challenge to create a tree-preservation plan.

Sands wanted the village to focus on prudent pruning and replacing old or dying trees that must come down instead of just removing them. James Gaughan, who was mayor at the time, committed then to replacing trees on Altamont’s side streets.

At the September meeting, Sands said that the village has now cut down 24 trees on Grand Street.

We hope to serve as a megaphone here for John Sands’s view, not just in Altamont but everywhere. All of the towns and villages we cover would benefit by having as part of their policies a plan to replace cut trees, maintain current trees, and plant new trees. Such a policies should remain in place, from one elected administration to the next.

In this era of global warming, trees are essential. Trees absorb the excess carbon dioxide we have spewed into our atmosphere by the use of fossil fuels. Trees store the carbon while releasing oxygen back into the air.

Trees absorb odors and other polluting gases, too, like ammonia, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and ozone. They filter particulates from the air, trapping them on their bark and leaves.

About one-third of the United States is forested. Much of that is managed timberland, planted and replanted every decade or two to makes product like wood pulp that produced this paper.

But as more land is developed, the planting of trees is often neglected. Here and there across America, communities are realizing the importance of trees. A nationwide effort, led by our federal government, would be most effective. But in these splintered times, we urge our individual municipalities — as well as individuals themselves — to act.

Los Angeles, which is emblematic of a car-driven, sprawling city, has an active not-for-profit group started by a teenager 40 years ago, TreePeople, that works with volunteer leaders using a citizen-forester model, which has involved three million people in planting and caring for more than three million trees.

“We’ve over-paved paradise,” the LA group writes in its literature. “On hot days, scorching surfaces bake in the heat, endangering people’s health.”

TreePeople lists 22 benefits of trees, among them:

— Cooling the city, since average temperatures in Los Angeles have risen 6 degrees in the last half-century as tree coverage declined and asphalt increased. Trees shade streets and homes and release water vapor into the air through their leaves;

— Conserving energy, since trees planted wisely can cut a home’s air-conditioning needs by half. During cold Northeastern winters, trees planted as a windbreak can reduce heating costs. And deciduous trees conveniently drop their leaves in the fall, allowing sun in the winter to warm the houses that trees shade in the summer;

— Saving water since shade trees slow water evaporation from thirsty lawns;

— Stopping water pollution as trees reduce runoff by breaking rainfall, allowing water to flow down and run into the earth below. This prevents stormwater from carrying pollutants to water sources. When mulched, trees act like sponges that filter water naturally and use it to recharge groundwater supplies;

— Preventing erosion as trees slow runoff and hold soil in place on hillsides;

— Shielding children from ultraviolet rays as trees reduce exposure to harmful ultraviolet rays by about half. Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States and planting trees on playgrounds or school campuses reduces the risk;

— Providing food since an apple tree, for example, planted in a suburban yard can yield 15 bushels of fruit and trees can also provide food for birds and other wildlife;

— Healing, as studies have shown patients with views of trees heal faster and children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, for example, show fewer symptoms with access to nature;

— Reducing violence since barren neighborhoods have a greater incidence of violence; and

— Creating economic opportunities since fruit harvested from community orchards can be sold. Small-business opportunities in green-waste management arise when municipalities value mulching and its water-saving qualities.

Trees can serve as landmarks and engender community pride. As the TreePeople have found, planting trees as a shared effort can bring together people of different ages, genders, and cultures for the common good.

We, as a newspaper, can see no downside to the municipalities in our midst creating tree-planting programs.

And if someone needs a practical dollar-and-cents reason — which goes beyond common sense — there’s an online tree calculator that will tell you the worth, in savings, of trees in your yard.

We plugged in Altamont’s ZIP code, and the age and species of Jerry Oliver’s felled silver maple, and learned that single tree provided benefits of $106 per year. This included savings in electricity, improvements in air quality, use in stormwater management, and of course worth in property value.

My own interest in this is personal and profound. As a young woman, a half-century ago, I traveled through the Hebrides, following the footsteps made in the late 1700s by the great English man of letters, Samuel Johnson, and his Scottish biographer, James Boswell. Dr. Johnson frequently lamented the nakedness — lacking trees — of the western islands of Scotland.

The observation hit home for me as I had stupidly brought in my backpack a tube tent for shelter, to be strung between two trees. I slept many nights in a soggy sleeping bag as the tube did little to shed the relentless rain and fog without trees for suspension.

But I learned a far more important lesson about trees from my travels. Dr. Johnson argued that the mark of a civilized man could be found in his planting of trees — because he would not live to see the full benefit of his labors. Rather, he would be working for the good of future generations.

That is a lesson we need to heed in this era when, all too often, Americans are willing to consume what we want now — to pollute our Earth to the point where we’ve changed its climate — heedless of future generations.

So we, as a newspaper, are picking up Sands’s challenge of a decade ago: Will our municipalities create tree-preservation plans?

We fervently hope so. Our future will not only be prettier but healthier.