A Tree Falls

I have an affinity for trees, particularly the trees in my own backyard. And after losing my favorite tree during a hurricane, I want compensation. Namely, a new tree.

Forget cleanup costs. I want a comparable-sized tree next to the deck where mine used to be. That’s all. No more, no less. I don’t think it’s too much to ask. 

Travelers Insurance disagrees. 

The insurance agent told me she’d never heard of such a thing.  “Good try, though,” she said and snorted.

She thought I was joking.

“Please stop haranguing the insurance company,” my mother said, “I have a policy there, too.”

She knew I wasn’t joking.

The tree itself was a Silver Maple. At least that’s what the guy who cut it into manageable chunks for me said it was. I always thought of it as a Mighty Oak.

We had our ups and downs, this tree and me. It had those little green helicopter things (not its best feature). I was always sweeping them away and swearing under my breath about it. But this tree also had thick, shiny leaves that shaded the deck perfectly on hot summer days.

This was a tree with a purpose. Now it’s firewood and I want someone to pay.

Elsewhere in my yard are three sheds filled with junk. Had any one of them been damaged in the storm my insurance policy would have paid to have them replaced. Three sheds that I never even use, and they would pay for that?  Yet nothing for a tree that I enjoyed every day?

A call to an attorney friend confirmed my standing under the law. First, he laughed, and then he explained I had no recourse. “You have to have damage to a man-made structure,” he said. “No damages, no payout. Simple as that.”

No damage? What about my mental anguish?

And there is the cost of removing the stump, or grinding it, as they say in the industry. Most estimates are around $1,000. One guy promised it would be gone within an hour, chopped out by his three buddies for $500 and a case of beer.

“Dump salt on it,” my friend Larry said to me. “It’ll rot away in three or four years.”

What none of these suggestions considers is the most important piece – a new tree.

While I can no more replace the tree than I would replace a beloved pet, I feel the need to somehow make things right. This small plot of land, my backyard, is under my stewardship at present. I do not want to leave it worse than I found it. And being down a tree is decidedly worse in my book.

Perhaps I will rent a chainsaw and tear this stump from the earth with my own hands. Then I will plant another tree in its place. I will also be sure to bury the roots deep enough so someone in the future will not have to go through what I have gone through.

Imagine having to prove the value of a tree? And then imagine being unable to do so.

When something has no value, it is as forgotten as an old shoe. Interesting that we are happy to pay for the fences, walls, and cement that separate us from nature and from each other. A shed has value. Yet the tree that gave rise to it, and gives oxygen and shade, and was likely home to scores of birds and other creatures, with limbs our kids climb and leaves our friends relax under, is without value?

I refuse to believe it.

September 2011