Back in August, I was running home from the gym on a warm Saturday morning. I had to pause briefly at an intersection on P St to wait for a car to cross, doing that awkward little jog-in-place thing.
I continued on down P, and seconds later the left side of my field of vision suddenly skewed, throwing my sense of balance off just enough to spike my adrenaline. But there was nothing wrong with my vision. This tree was falling, silently and slowly at first, then quite noisily as it bounced off the SUV parked in the street and crunched its way to the ground.
It felt at first as though I myself would have been hit by this tree were it not for the seconds I lost at the intersection. The angle wasn’t right though; I would have simply been closer and more rattled.
This tree had been suffering from some fungal infection for years; some life form that made it appear as though the tree was standing in a rancid puddle of pudding. It caught my eye more times than I can recall — what is that goopy shroom-y stuff?
The trees are not well in Sacramento — the city of trees. More than 1 million trees line our streets and fill our parks and backyards. Effectively none of them are native to this flood plain where two rivers meet. Yet anyone who has lived here for even just a few years can tell you that we have lost thousands to disease and the storms of 2023.
Over the next few weeks or months, I will be sharing some thoughts on a few trees around my neighborhood. Some are alive; most are dead. This series will be interspersed with other non-tree entries.
My allergies are so bad, but still I love these trees.