Creating the American Dream

CONNIE JO DISCOE

Regional Editor

McCOOK, Neb. — McCook’s tree rebate program encourages the planting of trees. Any town looks friendlier with an abundance of trees. And what “Great American Dream” of home ownership does not include a house sheltered by trees?

The real estate and insurance industries can put a dollar value on a tree, and lawn services look at leaves as job security. But the true value of trees has little to do with a checkbook or a calculator.

Trees just make people feel good. (Admittedly, there are those who hate to mow around them and rake their leaves.)

Many workers tend to be more productive when they can see trees from their office window. (Admittedly again, there are those who don’t care what the trees are doing, as long as the leaves and branches stay on the trees and not on their lawns, vehicles or houses).

Trees are relaxing. They lower heart rates and reduce stress. (Don’t dwell on the falling leaves … so, plant conifers that don’t drop leaves … )

According to www.zapworld.com, hospital patients who have a view of trees heal faster, use fewer pain meds and leave the hospital sooner than patients without a view. (Just visit Community Hospital’s beautiful Healing Garden and look over the hospital’s west lawn.)

Some studies indicate that trees in a shopping district impact shopping. Consumers are willing to spend more money in a shopping district with trees. They are willing to pay more for products purchased in a shopping district with trees. And shoppers rate stores as higher quality in a shopping district with trees.( McCook’s downtown shopping district has trees … just saying … )

Trees planted strategically around homes and buildings can reduce air-conditioning and heating costs. Trees can warm a person when he/she digs a hole to plant it, mows around it, rakes the leaves, chops it down, splits and stacks the firewood, carries it into the house and burns it in the fireplace or stove.

Trees increase the value of property. Houses surrounded by trees tend to sell higher than houses with no trees. And every kid wants to climb a tree and sail over the front yard in a tire swing hung from a massive cottonwood.

Trees mean jobs and contribute thousands and thousands of forest products and the raw material for newspapers — insert “the Gazette” here — and books.

Trees are renewable, biodegradable and recyclable. (By the way, there’s chipped wood mulch available at the McCook transfer station … )

Trees provide the earth with oxygen and remove carbon dioxide. No matter your overall outlook on trees, you can’t argue with these two benefits.

Trees provide shelter and food for wildlife and windbreaks for farm animals.

Trees just plain add beauty to the world. And they smell good. (I know, I know … a Russian olive is an obnoxious “weed,” but I think its smell in the spring is what heaven smells like. That, and homemade bread, fresh-cut alfalfa and puppy breath.)

And besides all this, poet William LeRoy Stidger writes in “The Vespers of a Tree” in 1920:

“At evening time along the sea, I like to watch an ancient tree, where gently at the close of day, it bows its leafy head to pray.

You’ll hear a whisper soft and low, as of One speaking tenderly, And in the wandering winds that blow, you’ll hear God talking to that tree.”