Out at Airlie Gardens this week, in addition to my absolute delight in the beds of flowering tulips, I found myself gazing with renewed awe at the live oak trees.
Tree gazing has become a default pastime of mine while driving back and forth across the city. Day by day, week by week the city’s beauty is further marred as Duke Energy shamelessly has its way with the trees.
If aliens were to ever land on the Earth and found themselves in Wilmington, North Carolina, they would surely be stupefied by the mutilated and disfigured treescape. What sort of civilization does this to its trees in the name of progress?
What is happening to the trees is appalling.
Where once, like sentinels, the native longleaf pine graced the roadsides, mutilated half trees now stand. Full bodied oleanders, having shaded these pathways 50 to 100 years, stand truncated. Hardy cedars also having withstood countless storms have been no match for the cutter. And the ancient live oaks, the symbol of strength, gentility and grace? Hacked.
All over the county the trees have been disfigured beyond belief. Just ride down Wrightsville Ave. to see tree after tree with its center cut out, leaving a mutilated V-shaped canopy. In front of the Galleria as on Wrightsville’s famed Loop the L-shaped cuts prevailed in the street-side oaks, but beside the council chambers the heart has been cut from that once magnificent tree.
And it is the same — again and again, anywhere Duke has been so far in the county.
We live in a country supposedly Pharaoh-less, but all over the county, as I look up into the trees lining the roadsides, the fingerprints of a ruthless Pharaoh are clearly visible.
Seemingly nowhere in the land is there anyone brave enough to challenge this bully.
“It has to be done,” officials shrug in acquiescence, “It is the power company.” They know all too well who their master is.
Not unlike the future King David, who grasped the injustice of what was happening and picked up three smooth stones against gigantic odds, a handful of Wrightsville residents mounted a protest in March, in the thick of the tree trimming gone wild on the town’s picturesque Live Oak Drive. There residents strode out in defense of two trees, climbing into one, as the remaining small band milled below.
At the time, like David, it seemed almost childish, defying the electric company tree cutters in a desperate effort to save the splendidness of the last two full-canopied trees at the start of the street where wildlife abound and joyful wedding parties come to pose for pictures.
Is there no other way, one wonders, to save the beauty cherished by so many? Is there no way to save the trees?
The answer is there is always another way; what is being done is the least expensive option for the utility company and the utility company rules.
The electricity can be knocked out in a storm by tree branches, that is a given. It doesn’t happen that frequently, but no one desires that, least of all Duke Energy. Without all those spinning power meters the stream of dollars into Pharoah’s coffers would slow. Make no mistake; this is all about greed, money and power.
Duke Energy is the power in this state, holding everyone, including the elected officials, in an unrelenting tight-fisted grip.
Lawyered up to the gills, Duke took three weeks or longer to formulate a plan to force the town to arrest any resident who would dare to climb back into those trees on Harbor Island. Rebellion is a contagious thing, and you can bet Duke wanted to squash like an annoying bug any future tree-sitting protestor, before any further rebellion might spark elsewhere.
The residents on Live Oak are to be applauded for their act of bravery. Right now it appears things may work out for them, after Duke’s disappointing heavy-handed first meeting with the town to present legal ramifications, persistent residents were finally granted an audience with power officials last week for two to three representatives of their street and the town manager. This damage control move on the part of Duke provided residents with a new level of comfort over the fate of the last two trees.
Methinks this was a pretty big deal for the suits at Duke, which cannot appear to be weak or caving to the demands of outraged citizens; because, before they are done, maimed longleafs, spoiled oleanders, butchered cedars and mutilated oaks will line the roadsides from the mountains to the sea. No tree will be spared, not even the glorious maple. Wilmington is just one small blip on the statewide radar on the long list of trees to be “trimmed.”
In the meantime, we have treasured places like Airlie where we can go to see live oaks, oleanders, ancient cedars and longleaf pines that have not been disfigured in the name of progress.
For those without the price of admission into the verdant county park? Take heart; just last weekend, I gazed with wonder at a magnificent live oak tree shading the children’s playground in Hillcrest, grateful no power lines were near.
It is high time for the town to pull out and dust off the plan to put the power lines underground. There should be no next regularly scheduled “tree trimming” event in the town. The county and city of Wilmington should do the same.
If we let this maiming happen again, shame on us.
