When I was in sixth grade, my family moved from Harvard, Mass., to Colorado Springs, Colo. Our new house was on a ridge with a view of Pikes Peak, which famously inspired Katharine Lee Bates, class of 1880, to write “America the Beautiful.” I found the new landscape dramatic, beautiful—and unsettling. The house I had grown up in was surrounded by forest; my younger brothers and I climbed trees, built forts, and flew among the treetops on a thrillingly hazardous zipline. Our backyard in Colorado had some scrub oak, but we were disconcertingly open to the elements. We could see storms roll in over the Great Plains from states away. When we moved back to the Boston area two years later, I felt relieved as we drove down winding roads lined by trees on our way to our next home. In Massachusetts, the trees grew tall around the house and felt, to me, protective. I remember thinking that it felt easier to breathe surrounded by trees.
It’s not surprising that I chose to attend Wellesley, with its lush landscape and reverence for trees, and that when Grace Ramsdell ’22 suggested writing something about them, I enthusiastically supported the idea. Her essay, “Above All,” beautifully captures the way that members of the Wellesley community care for and interact with the campus’s trees.
We are so attached to our trees, in fact, that Dave Chakraborty, Wellesley’s recently retired assistant vice president for facilities management and planning, learned to send emails to the faculty-staff LISTSERV when trees had to be cut down. When a red oak in front of the Physical Plant suffered a rapid decline and was in danger of dropping limbs on pedestrians, Chakraborty delivered the bad news gently. “The decision to remove a tree, especially one of this size, is always difficult. However, safety remains our top priority,” he wrote. He added that in preparation for this eventuality, the landscaping team had been planting replacement trees in the same area over the previous several years.
And, of course, one new tree every year is dedicated to the sophomore class. I did not attend the Tree Day ceremony my sophomore year, but Dean Anita Tien recounted a story about it at my class’s senior luncheon. Dean Tien and a small but stalwart group of ’99ers braved inclement weather to hold a ceremony for our class tree—except, there was a mixup, and they wound up honoring the wrong tree. Every time I walk by the chapel, I make a special point to stop by the dogwood opposite its east entrance, to make sure it feels appropriately recognized and appreciated. It is, after all, a tie to my class. And regardless, it is very beautiful in its own right.
