Once upon a time, for a long time, a tree stood on the corner of College and Wentworth streets, just beside Webster Hall. Last Friday a stump squatted in its place and empty air was left to mark the hole where its branches had once been.
Strange thing to mourn a tree, when there are many more pressing things; lost and homeless people, natural disasters, revolutions brewing and boiled over. I know all this to be true, but I could not let such a strong and beautiful thing pass from the scene without a word of farewell.
This tree's beginning must be beyond the memories of most people currently at Dartmouth: faculty, staff and certainly students. It probably witnessed World War II, if not World War I; the beginnings of co-education, and definitely my matriculation, though I doubt it took much notice of anything besides soil water content.
I have grown used to walking through Dartmouth and seeing the landscape ripple and change - stumps left to mark the spots where huge trees fell (in most cases not left at all), construction girders springing up to mark new construction, roads upturned to lay new piping. Yet of all these changes a tree's removal is the easiest to make and the hardest to hide.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the tree survived the renovation of Webster Hall. If it leapt that hurdle, I thought, nothing would challenge its existence for a long time. So I was taken by surprise to see its branches lopped off last Wednesday, but even then I thought it was just a precautionary measure; pruning, probably. Then I came upon it Friday to find its trunk had been pruned off. How ironic that a tree which survived so many events to become as much of a historical marker as anything held in the Special Collections should disappear so casually, so quickly.
One of the things which make Dartmouth special is the balancing act here between human influence and natural things; it's the healthy tension between two systems. It's inevitable that nature will lose in the long run, at least in Hanover, as Dartmouth's needs grow greater and more complex, demanding ever more space. Just look at the old elm behind Baker, the grove of trees behind Tuck and Thayer, or the construction behind Zimmermann creeping ever so slowly towards the Bema. It doesn't take much thought to realize that Dartmouth grows older and balder with every passing day. But I hope that Dartmouth is not as indifferent to its history as it appears to be to its trees.
I wonder what prompted the powers that be at FO&M, or the gardeners or whoever made the call, to cut this particular tree down. Was it the scare from the recent summer storm? Did it obstruct the view of the new and improved Webster Hall? Had it finally succumbed to the weight of years and old age? No one but the hatchet men know for sure.
Only this is certain: there will be no more sitting beneath this tree on lazy afternoons; no more coloring and shedding of leaves in fall. It will no longer stand a stark skeleton against the sky in winter, nor will its branches bear bright buds of promise in the spring. It was here; it is gone; that is all.
But there's a certain bittersweet satisfaction in reporting that it 'did not go gentle into that good night.' It took about two days to wrestle it to the ground. But what a tree, to leave such a giant tombstone of a stump!
We shall not see one like it again for a long, long time.
