The Trees are Coming Back

I lean out my window and I am astonished to see how many California Oaks now line my once bare and practical street. There is a squirrel in the one outside my kitchen, two in fact. I see them deep in a lush cave of leaves, grooming themselves and pleased with life. I used to feed them peanuts on my bedroom balcony, assuaging guilt at the loss of wild habitats all around me, but I have not done so for a long time. There is no need, for acorns litter the ground now, and berry bushes and sunflowers crowd the lush grasses in the field across the street, now allowed by city law to go grow freely between the houses. There are more trees all across the state now, almost to the level they were in the California the Spaniards explored 250 years ago. The newspaper says the project has been so successful here and on the east coast, it is to be expanded. The young people are planting them. Hundreds of high schools have signed up to participate, many even making it a condition of graduation. Before those high school diplomas are handed out, the graduates must not only pass a course in environmental science and engineering, but personally plant at least 500 trees. And the schools make it so easy and fun for them, planning adventures for the seniors with road trips and festivals and competitions with prizes. The Forestry Department cooperates with the schools and tells them which tracts need attention. This has visibly made a difference, not only in the cities. The hundreds of bare, fire-ravaged foothills of the Sierra have filled in over the past twenty years, with beech, and oak and madrone. And above them young Douglas Fir and Sequoia are reaching upward. Even the great halls of the Redwood forests are filled with healthy saplings. Interestingly, as the state has grown greener, the rains have increased, easing the anxieties of the fire seasons. There are still some fires of course, but not nearly so many and they no longer burn so long or so far. It is a great relief for us, the older generation. And the youngsters, the ones I know,  seem to me different now, more interested in the natural world. Less cynical. There is excitement in their eyes when they speak to me of their future. Hope that was not there before.