
(Image: Arboretum Foundation)
The other day I found myself aimless and waiting. Any other winter, I probably would have plopped down at a cafe with a book or journal. We’ve all had a bit more time and fewer options than we’re used to in this time-starved existence. It was time to dwell on how absolutely terrible 2020 was and then move on. Time to start baking bread. Time to finally clean out that storage closet. Time to get outside. I chose the latter, and found myself poking about in the Washington Park Arboretum.
As a sometime arborist who grew up installing garden designs for my mother’s business, I’ve always appreciated arboretums. They may be entirely contrived spaces, but they are also spaces for people who live urban existences to be in dialogue with trees and plants and everything they support (By the way, did you know that Bigleaf Maples in the Olympics can support upwards of 77 pounds of epiphytic organisms in their canopies?!). I found myself not only picking along paths gawking at specimen trees and in equal appreciation of unkempt corners, but spinning my head to watch Red Crossbill take off from the top of a Douglas Fir and noticing how well the layers of green muffled the external sounds of traffic and construction. And the internal noise of my angst about life, the world, and well, everything.
How lucky is it that this kind of place exists at all? I can say this without contradicting my sincere support of the LANDBACK movement (knowing I stood on Duwamish territory) and knowing that arboretums are not natural spaces. That people bothered to devote spaces in the city to growing plants, just for the sake of growing them, the same way that we house libraries, floors me. And while I know that arboretums are more than just tree libraries, I am deeply grateful that they exist. Continue reading