In Praise of Trees

“When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and hope.”
     ― Wangari Maathai (1940-2011), Kenyan environmentalist, political activist, and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

From backyards to rain forests, trees provide the environmental necessities we need to survive. They generate the oxygen we breathe and clean our air and water. They create habitat for wildlife, and with their beauty and shade they help support our own mental and physical well-being.

But in addition to the practical benefits we receive from trees, the act of planting a tree often carries with it an unconscious emotional charge that transports us to the deeper regions of our psyches, where the effects of life’s joys and sorrows have left their imprints. In the varied spiritual traditions of world cultures from the most ancient of times, humans have also planted trees as a symbolic ritual that can acknowledge the cycles of life, celebrate a marriage, welcome a birth, or to pay homage to the memory and accomplishments of a loved one.

On April 10, 1872, the Nebraska Department of Agriculture officially designated a new holiday called “Arbor Day,” to be added to other calendar celebrations in the United States. This day of tree honoring encouraged new settlers to plant trees as a practical ecological intervention on the harsh and windswept landscape of the Great Plains—even though numerous indigenous communities in Nebraska (especially the Lakota)—already had their own, well-documented traditions for honoring trees.

As time passed, nearly every state of the union recognized this new holiday, which inspired other communities worldwide to strengthen their own ties with existing tree honoring celebrations.

Arbor Day Around the Globe

Small acts add up to Global Good.
     — Arbor Day Foundation call to action 

The four “In Praise of Trees” celebrations I describe below (as introductions to Arbor Day in other countries) are followed by a link to a list of additional countries where your own ancestors may also have planted trees for beauty, inspiration or homage. If you have memories or examples of how tree planting has been a part of your life—either in the present or the past—please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below this post.

In the United States, National Arbor Day is celebrated on the last Friday in April. Some states have their own arbor day celebrations, based on best local planting times.

Wangari Maathai: Kenya’s “Mother of Trees”

Environmental visionary Wangari Maathai was born in 1940, in the small village of Nyeri, located in the central highlands of (British-ruled) “Kenya Colony.” As a young girl growing up in that era, she was expected to become a traditional wife and mother, and was not offered the same educational benefits that her brothers received at the village primary school. But as time passed, Wangari’s mother began to lobby for extending educational opportunities to her daughter as well, and at age eight, Wangari began studies at the same school her brothers attended. She was an excellent student who was later admitted to St. Cecelia’s Catholic Mission School in her home village, where she became fluent in English and converted to Catholicism. She completed four years of studies at St. Cecilia’s, graduated first in her class, and never forgot the civic lessons she learned there, which emphasized “service to others” as a primary value. 

In her 2010 book, Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World, Maathai clearly acknowledged her gratitude for the religious influences (both her indigenous Kikuyu religion and Christianity) that later shaped her environmental thinking and activism. As she frequently commented to others as a reminder of her commitment to justice and the betterment of society:

“We all need to work hard to make a difference in our neighborhoods, regions, and countries, and in the world as a whole.” 

Because of her exemplary academic standing, in 1960 Wangari Maathai was one of 300 African students who became beneficiaries of the “Kennedy Airlift,” a program administered by the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, which offered scholarships for deserving African students to study in the United States. And after earning both a bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in the United States, Maathai returned to Kenya to complete her education at the University of Nairobi, and became the first woman in East and Central Africa to receive a Ph.D.

As an adult, Wangari Maathai became famous in her own country and abroad as a tireless environmentalist, a political activist, an advocate for women’s rights, and a Nobel Peace laureate. She is most well-known for her organizing work with the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots conservation effort she founded in 1977, which eventually planted more than 50 million trees in Kenya and beyond. Among her friends and supporters, she was honored with the affectionate nickname, “The Mother of Trees.” 

The Green Belt Movement

The Green Belt Movement was a response to concerns raised by rural Kenyan women who witnessed the ongoing illegal deforestation taking place in their communities. As a practical remedy, Maathai encouraged the women to gather seeds of native trees in nearby forests to plant in locally-managed nurseries. Through grants from the United Nations, Maathai paid the women a small stipend for each sapling they grew, and later, she was also able pay stipends to the women’s husbands and sons, who were literate and could keep accurate records of the seedlings they grew. 

Throughout her life, Wangari Maathai made use of trees as easily-understood symbols that inspired local communities to work together to create a healthier environment. In 1977, with this goal in mind, Maathai marched with supporters in a procession from downtown Nairobi to Kamukunji Park on the outskirts of the city, where they planted seven trees in honor of historical community leaders. The march was the first public declaration of the Green Belt Movement’s vision, but it instantly generated palpable hostility from the government’s authoritarian elite and their policy enforcers.

As Maathai became more visible acting on her environmental and community-oriented views, she was repeatedly targeted as a “mad woman” and a “threat to the order and security of the country” by the Kenyan president. In government-run media outlets, Maathai and her followers were routinely labeled “a bunch of divorcees” and were continually harassed by illegal arrests, jailings, and unprovoked attacks by the president's police cronies. She soon discovered that her name was on a government list to be assassinated, and after surviving an especially violent physical altercation, she spoke about this situation in her book “Unbowed:”

It is often difficult to describe to those who live in a free society what life is like in an authoritarian regime. You don't know who to trust. You worry that you, your family, or your friends will be arrested and jailed without due process. The fear of political violence or death, whether through direct assassinations or targeted “accidents”, is constant. Such was the case in Kenya, especially during the 1990s.
     — Wangari Maathai, Unbowed, p. 206

In her 2007 speech at the World Social Forum, Wangari Maathai shared her thoughts about her life as a public figure:

After enduring half a lifetime of hateful and violent actions by Kenya’s government to extinguish her peaceful ideals, Wangari Maathai was chosen in 2004 to receive the Nobel Prize:

…for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace, recognizing her work with the Green Belt Movement, and her broader advocacy for environmental protection and human rights.
     — The 2004 Nobel Prize Selection Committee

In the following excerpt taken from her Nobel laureate acceptance speech, Maathai sums up the background and philosophy of her life vision:

It is 30 years since we started this work. Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated. Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own—indeed to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared the evolutionary process.
     — Wangari Maathai, The “Mother of Trees,” and 2004 Nobel Laureate

The Queen Anne Treewalk

From 2001 through 2005, in collaboration with a small group of artists and poets and the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, I initiated and helped develop an unusual public art event in Seattle called the Queen Anne Treewalk, which reflected many of the ideals that Wangari Maathai had integrated into her own life’s work. 

In addition to the Department of Parks and Recreation, several other nature-based organizations also supported the Treewalk, including “Cambium Arts Resources,” the name of our own non-profit arts group. We took our botanically-themed name from the Latin word “cambium” which means “exchange.” The cambium is the one-celled, nearly invisible, regenerative layer of tissue just beneath the outer bark, that gives the tree all its power to live and grow. Our name was also a symbolic reminder that even the largest trees must grow from the smallest of beginnings, and it inspired us (especially as a small group) to access and publicly express the power of nature-inspired visions through art.

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in exploring new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes.
     — Marcel Proust, (1871-1922), French novelist, literary critic, and essayist

Treewalk Overview

(2002-2005)

The Treewalk Nature Poetry Chapbooks

As part of the Treewalk educational offerings from 2003-2005, Cambium Arts Resources sponsored a nature poetry contest, with prizes for both adult and youth poets. The winners in both categories read their poems aloud at the “Poetry Pavilion” at Parsons Gardens, a destination along the Treewalk walking route. City Councilman Richard Conlin (an accomplished poet himself) presided at the festivities.

An Inspiring Art Proposal

For several years, Cambium Arts Resources reviewed a variety of proposals year-round for inclusion in each year’s Treewalk art installation lineup, and in the the winter of 2004, we received a unique and timely installation proposal—sent to us by artist Ter Sámilson—that honored the 2004 Nobel laureate, Wangari Maathai. Our Cambium group was so excited by this submission that it only took a few minutes for us to wholeheartedly approve it. 

Ter’s installation proposal was titled “Green Belt”—the same name that Wangari Maathai had chosen for the community-supported tree planting movement she initiated throughout Kenya in 1977. Ter’s completed Green Belt was crafted from several hand-stitched and embellished cloth panels pieced together as a “belt” that physically surrounded the tree trunk’s considerable girth. The panels’ imagery illustrated rural women of Kenya tending their tree nurseries and later planting the young saplings themselves in nearby, environmentally compromised forests.

Ter’s synchronistic installation proposal generated a flurry of lively “stream of consciousness” conversations within our Cambium group, and when our wild-eyed, “artistic” thoughts were finally revealed out loud in simple words, we discovered that we were all sharing the same, nearly impossible dream: we wanted to find a way to bring Wangari Maathai to Seattle for an in-person presentation about her work. We understood immediately that we would need to collaborate with larger groups that shared like-minded ideals. We also realized that Ter Sámilson's art proposal might provide an inspiring resource to help publicize and present our idea to others. In the meantime, we needed to locate an experienced spokesperson who could make some initial contacts. But how could we locate the perfect person to fill this role?

After thinking about this puzzle for a few days, I suddenly remembered a gracious, generous, articulate, and quietly determined woman I had met years before who was well-known in Seattle’s progressive circles, and had worked for decades promoting many of the same civil rights, quality integrated education, and environmental protection ideals that Wangari Maathai had incorporated into her own work. She had previously donated funding to support one of our Treewalk artists and had also been a guest at one of my special, Spring (“all girl”) Tree Parties in my home, which celebrated the annual blooming of the nearly 100 year-old magnolia tree outside my large front window.

The spokesperson I had in mind was Katherine “Kay” Bullitt, and if anyone could mobilize a plan to help bring Wangari Maathai to Seattle, she would know how to proceed. 

And she did.

I called Kay Bullitt and set up an in-person visit to talk about the Wangari Maathai dream idea our group was proposing. And when I showed Kay a photo of Ter Sámilson’s beautiful Green Belt installation near the end of our conversation, she audibly gasped in response.

Within weeks, a representative from Kay’s large circle of friends and elected City Hall officials contacted Maathai's staff, and learned that she would be traveling to the United States in the future for some public presentations, and it might be possible for her to add an additional appearance in Seattle.

With Kay Bullitt’s organizing network now behind this outreach, it still took considerable time for all the details to be approved. But finally, in March of 2006, Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, the “Mother of Trees,” arrived in Seattle to give an in-person presentation at Benaroya (Symphony) Hall.

The event was completely sold out. 

Behind the Scenes at a Special Visit

On the day that Wangari Maatthai arrived at Benaroya Hall for her presentation, the “Green Room” next to the main auditorium (no pun intended) was reserved for an intimate reception for Maathai and local supporters of her visionary work. In the gallery below, I include several behind-the-scenes photos of the festivities:

Epilogue: A Memorial Garden

On September 25th, 2013, the Wangari Maathai Trees and Garden was dedicated on the lawn of the University of Pittsburgh, where Maathai earned her Master's degree in 1966. The Pittsburgh memorial to her pioneering work includes two red maples that symbolize Maathai's “commitment to the environment, her founding of the Green Belt Movement, and her roots in Kenya and in Pittsburgh.” The two maple trees stand behind a flower garden planted in a circular shape that represents her “global vision and dedication to the women and children of the world.”

A single ornamental maple tree in the center of the garden signifies “how one small seed can change the world.”