Wisconsin Public Television University Place  R. Bruce Allison If Trees Could Talk  August 21, 2012 UP760   cc >> Today we are pleased to introduce and host local author Bruce Allison as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's History Sandwiched In lecture series. The opinions expressed today are those of the presenter and not necessarily the Wisconsin Historical Society or the museum's employees. Please join me in welcoming Bruce to the stage as he shares his answer to "If Trees Could Talk." [APPLAUSE] >> Well, thank you very much, and I really appreciate you all forgoing lunch just to indulge in watching me present a lecture about my passion and that is trees. And the title might be a little confusing for some people. Jeffrey asked me before I began talking if I had heard about some recent research on the communication between trees. My title, of course, the book that I had published through the Wisconsin Historical Society Press is "If Trees Could Talk." And Jeffrey said he had read recently that indeed there was some research that showed there was communication between trees. And I said yes, that's right. There's tremendous amount of communication between trees that if a tree is under stress, if it's connected through the root system to other like species, the other species will respond. They, for example, if tree one is being attacked by an insect, its leaves are being chewed, the other trees will suddenly create chemical responses in their leaves to make it less tasty to those insects that might be feeding. A lot of communication going on. 

Many years ago a researcher at Cornell University wrote a book called "The Secret Life of Plants." Anybody remember that one? It came out maybe 35 years ago. A professor had, just for the fun of it, attached to a philodendron and a galvanic skin response meter, same thing they use for lie detector tests, put it on that plant and discovered that when they were in that room and something dramatic was happening between people, the plant responded. "The Secret Life of Plants." And believe me, having spent 40 years of my life studying trees, going to fields every day to take a look at trees in people's backyards, in large corporations, out in the forest, the woods, I am well aware that there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. And that's what science is all about. But in addition to the science, there's also the other component. I would call it the historical, the cultural, the connection between us and trees because we are connected to trees. We're not just connected to each other. We know that if somebody in this room, we would have an immediate emotional response. I've already established the fact that those trees would have a response if another tree was under stress. But there's also communication between us as humans and those as trees, and I perceive it largely in that whole feeling of historical connection. 

Trees are unique organisms. They're the oldest living organisms on Earth. The bristlecone pine out near Bishop, California, in the White Mountains, 5,000 years old. They're the tallest living organisms. The stratospheric sequoia sempervirens is over 395 feet tall. Nobody planted that tree. Nobody's watering that tree. No one's taking care of it, per se. It's done it all on its own to reach the height of a 39-story skyscraper. They're the most massive living organisms. 

General Sherman still holds that record of mass. If you were able to cut this tree down, which you would never want to, you could make more than a hundred houses from the wood that it has laid down by gathering sunlight, by pulling water and salts from the Earth and created, through its genetic blueprint, a remarkable, tall, huge organism. If trees could talk. I'm R. Bruce Allison. I'm a faculty member of the Wisconsin Department of Forestry and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I've had my own tree care and consulting service for almost 40 years now in the Madison area. I've had a chance to publish three books. One which is distributed by the University of Wisconsin Press, and the other one, other two, are published and distributed by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. "Every Root an Anchor," which is a long-time project of mine, started with the help of Walter Scott, who was the editor of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, publication Wisconsin Academy for many years now, deceased for a long time, but he was very helpful to me when I first arrived in Madison and I said gee, I'd like to record some of these stories in a book form. He pulled out, literally, dozens of boxes of stories that he had been gathering over the years and had not had a chance in his older age to be able to put it together in book form and was delighted that I was able to do so with the book that is now called "Every Root an Anchor." I was approached by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, and they said would you be willing to write a children's version of that. 

And of course I've never written a children's book before. That was quite a challenge. I had some help along the way, but I wanted to put it in a more condensed form because, really, it's not just what we know, but it's what we convey to the next generation that really counts. Those trees are like temporal markers in our spatial landscape. They are there for us to see, but they were also there for perhaps one or two generations before and hopefully will be there for the next two or three or four generations in the future. They connect us to the past. They connect us to the future. The outline for the book is ancient and huge trees, unusual trees, Indian story trees, pioneer trees, Civil War trees, well-loved trees, disappearing trees. Who remembers the elms? Save trees and keeping trees green. One of my favorite tree of great size and significance was the General Douglas MacArthur white pine in the Nicolet National Forest. 

Unfortunately, about four years ago now it finally succumbed to lightning strikes. You can imagine this very tall tree out in the middle of the woods. As a remnant of the white pine forest that used to exist before Europeans came to this continent and in such a short order cut almost all of those trees down, this indigenous forest that existed that must have been unbelievable. Trees that were 500, 600, 700 years old of huge girth, one after the other. The Aboriginals, the Native Americans that lived here, had no need or interest in cutting these trees down. They became habitat for the animals that they were interested in, became sacred spaces for them to create their families, to live, to age, to watch life go by. The Europeans had something different in mind and cut many, many of those down to ship them down to Chicago where they were used to create buildings, and, of course, you know what happened shortly thereafter. They all burned down with the Great Chicago Fire. The MacArthur pine, and why was it called MacArthur pine? Who can answer that in a nutshell? Douglas MacArthur, World War II hero, was a Wisconsin native. And so it made sense for those people who discovered this tree as a remnant of the great past, as one with great stature, to name it after Douglas MacArthur who was, of course, a great hero during the second World War. 

Harry Truman didn't think he was such a hero, and as you remember that story during the pre-Korean War period, he was very quickly dismissed for overstepping the bounds of what Truman thought was appropriate military behavior. But that tree stood for many, many years. Many people came to it. And as often can occur when too much attention is put on people, think of all of the famous people who are in the media or in music who have had challenged lives. They are stressed. They are not happy. They've got money and fame, but all that attention is too much. For this tree, all those people coming up, walking around it, looking up at the great height, didn't realize that an important part of that tree was its root  system, and that by all those people walking on the soil were compacting the soil. Roots need water, oxygen, and minerals. By compressing that soil, it made not very good absorption for water so it became stressed. 

It became more difficult for those roots to be able to uptake all of the minerals that were available, and the tree became quickly stressed. They responded by putting a large fence around that tree. Lightning, of course, they couldn't do much about that, and eventually the tree fell. Another huge tree that's still hanging in there but is not quite what it was is in Columbus. When I did my book, "Wisconsin's Champion Trees," I went out there and measured this tree, and, sure enough, it had the largest circumference of any trees in the state of Wisconsin. Thirty-six feet going around that trunk. And of course the cottonwood grows very quickly. You can imagine if that was an oak, it would be a very ancient oak indeed. The tree has had a limb fall down. It's not quite what it used to be, but there were two very proud dairy farmers who were posing by that tree for the picture, which we ended up putting on the cover of the first edition of "Wisconsin's Champion Trees." Many unusual trees in the state. 

I've progressed through life, used to think that when I was young I could take credit for everything, that all the good things that happened to me were the result of my hard work and so many brains I must have. That's not true at all. One lives in a milieu that brings back good things to them. I had the good fortune to have several mentors out there. One mentor, as I mentioned, was Walter Scott who was with the early Department of Conservation that became the DNR. He was very helpful in helping me get to the next level of writing these stories because he had that dream also. It took at least two generations to get there. Another one who was really helpful was Robert Gard. Robert Gard was a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Arts Development, started the Rhinelander School of the Arts, spent much of his career going out to the outskirts of the state and encouraging people to bring their stories in, which then he published because he wanted to preserve those stories for the next generation. He's also long since dead but a very important person in my life, and he said, Bruce, you can't write this book without going and see this scary oak out in Kettle Moraine State Forest. 

And, sure enough, I went out there and, for him, and of course he was very creative, he was actually a dramatist, he looked at that tree and he saw something kind of spooky, something kind of strange, something that would frighten kids early in the morning or late at night when the dusk was just setting in. For me of course, as a scientist of trees, I saw burls, I saw a tree's reactive growth to a wound or perhaps some activity of insects or maybe some fungus going on. But I began to open my eyes a little wider, beyond just being the scientist and seeing that yes, indeed, there was something scary about that oak. And that oak was relating to people in many different ways. During the Halloween period at Kettle Moraine, many young children come to that tree to be scared, and indeed I'm sure they are. They'll remember that much longer than if I gave them a lecture on burl formation on a result of fungal activity. [LAUGHTER] You know, sometimes you see the oddest things with trees, and these were some trees which are actually elms that were brought over from Scotland. If you can just barely see a little horizontal line towards the center, these are elm trees, tampered down elms, that had the characteristic of the crown drooping. They're very pendulous. They're almost like vines hanging down. 

And what the horticulturalist did was to cut some of those, ship them over from Scotland, and then to graft them on to the stumps of a more normal elm tree. And this is the result that you got. These trees that look like they were growing upside down. And the children used to love to go by this area in Wilmot and talk about how those trees were naughty and they were turned upside down by their owners to teach them a lesson. I can only imagine that that must have been the experience those children had at home when they were perhaps turned upside down for not quite behaving as they should. Well, you can't tell the story of Wisconsin's historical trees without recognizing those people who were here before the North Americans came, before the Europeans came in. And one that has left his mark was Chief Black Hawk, a member of the Sauk Indian tribe who was promised wonderful land in Missouri if he would just leave his home area of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, that far better fields for hunting would be available. So he took his band of 1500 Native Americans who were living quite well and happily where they were and believed what he had been offered, signed his land over to the military, who, of course, wanted it for the new immigrants coming in, went to Missouri and discovered it wasn't as they had promised. He said no deal. He came back. 

I want my land back. The military said sorry, no problem.  And thus commenced the Black Hawk Wars. It was an opportunity for the military to chase Black Hawk and his followers throughout the southern part of the state through the area around Lake Mendota. We have Black Hawk Country Club as an example as an area passed very nearby by Chief Black Hawk. And of course you know how the story ended. Quite sadly at Wisconsin Heights. There was a massacre. The military didn't really take many prisoners. Chief Black Hawk did survive. 

There at Black Hawk Country Club was a huge hickory tree that is by all the Indian mounds. And, of course, Black Hawk wasn't part of the mound culture, but those mounds, which came 500-1,000 years before, were representations of the Native American Aboriginal culture. And so those golfers at Black Hawk, and especially the manager, a gentleman by the name of -- took pride in naming that big hickory tree the Black Hawk Hickory. In Prairie du Chien, this is an historic photo, there was a cottonwood tree. After the end of the Black Hawk's rebellion, he was taken prisoner, and he was able to escape, which is amazing. And the myth at least, I don't think it's 100% true, but the people in Prairie du Chien believe it true, he hid for several days in the trunk of this large cottonwood. The people believe that and took pride in that cottonwood being there to the point that rather than cut it down even though they had a road nearby, they let it be the median strip and drove on either side. Eventually, a great wind storm did take it down. But people there still remember the story of Black Hawk hiding for many days successfully away from his captors before being recaptured. And, of course, during that period of Native Americans in conflict and also in close companionship with the Europeans who were moving in in larger and larger number, there was an Indian Agency established by the federal government. 

That is somebody who was assigned to these territories to help keep peace among the Native Americans and the new immigrants coming in. This is the Indian Agency house which was noted for the beautiful elms. And, of course, remember, we didn't have electricity, rural electricity back then so we didn't have air conditioning. It was really dependent upon those big elm trees to be able to keep that house cool during the hot summer months. That's where we had sustainability by having trees integrate with our architecture. And this was a place where the fur traders would come in, and the Native Americans would gather around the Indian Agency and have conferences. They'd have trading going on. The Native Americans had very complex trading routes all throughout North America. It's amazing when you take a look at the history. Thousands of miles, all well-worn paths. 

Carrying flint from one area, carrying amber, different types of foods and ornamentation, different minerals, throughout the entire North American area. The Europeans coming over, of course, who were interested in furs and a few other things. The Native Americans were interested in those things that they couldn't produce. And here at that Indian Agency house was John Kinzie, who was the appointed Indian agent, and he had perhaps the good insight, perhaps the good fortune, to marry a wonderful woman, Juliette Kinzie. He came from out east, and, of course, these Indian Agency posts were granted as a type of patronage. So he was offered this opportunity even though he lived in Massachusetts, I believe, and he had this young bride, Juliette. He said, would you go out with me? And, of course, Juliette was a very sophisticated woman. She played piano. She was used to the nicer things that the east coast could offer at that point. And she said, well, we're going out to live in a house that isn't even built yet, where there's hardly a road leading there, we have to take a stagecoach and wagons and horses to go this great distance, I don't know if I'm going to have any of the entertainment that I'm used to here, yes I'll do it if you'll bring one item for me and that is my piano. 

And, of course, John is thinking, how am I going to get a piano out there? But he did. And so she had her piano there, and that house became a culture center for all of those people either passing through that part of Portage. And remember, Portage is named Portage for a good reason. It's at a very important key point of the Wisconsin River. The Native Americans, during their tribal gatherings, would also be invited to come on in. And she'd play beautiful music. Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, wonderful songs that would enliven everybody and given them a taste of a distant culture. She made a tremendous contribution to Wisconsin's history and made friends through the arts and creativity. Well, this was the first house in Madison. The Peck house. 

Does anybody know the story of the Peck house? If you do a little research on that, it wasn't far from here. It was right on Lake Monona. The Peck house, you probably know the story of James Doty who had a pretty good idea that this would be our state capital, because he had made sure that many of the territorial legislators had a piece of land in this area that he had platted. And so of course they were quite inclined to make this the new state capital, and indeed it was. They began to build the capitol building before they had anybody living here, and so Doty knew it was pretty important to get somebody here so he sent a letter to a pioneer friend of his in Blue Mounds, Ebenezer Peck, and said we need somebody to live here. I'll give you a plot of land if you agree to come here. And so he came. He left his wife, Roseline, and a newborn baby and a three-year-old behind, and he went with his older sons to come and start to build this cabin. And he finally finished it, and, of course, they would put the cabin, as did the Indian Agency houses, beneath a tree. That was your landmark in the otherwise pretty homogeneous forest. 

They had that tree there, which cooled the house, was a landmark, they could tell people you look for the tall oak and we're beneath that, and they were quite proud to have finished it. He said to Roseline it's now ready, come on over. Well, his timing was wrong. This is back when spring weather would occasionally bring another snowstorm. Roseline got the message, she packed the newborn baby and her three-year-old into a cart and began the trip into Madison which we think, well, that shouldn't be so far. You just jump on 151 and 18. [LAUGHTER] That wasn't the case. There was the old military road, but it was a pretty rough and tumble road. And she got about halfway and the storm came in. She had to spend the night, so she bundled the babies up all around her with some furs that she had, and she wrote, and I went to the primary source material, in her diary. 

She wrote about how she heard the wolves howling in the distance. They might have been coyotes. I'm not so sure that wolves were that prevalent at that time. Maybe they were. And how they survived that storm. She was a wonderful pioneer woman who could do almost anything, and she gathered her children the next day and continued. She arrived at the cabin, and her husband, quite proud, says, well, here it is. She looked inside and she said, well, it's not quite ready, is it? The waddling hadn't been done. It hadn't been enough stucco on the inside. There were still areas where she could see sunlight through the walls. 

So they spent another three or four days finishing up to her level of cleanliness required, and indeed it was finally done. She would host many parties for those people coming in to this now emerging city underneath that great oak tree. It was a wonderful addition to the community. They were there at critical moments of growth, and Roseline Peck, as you can see, was a strong woman who was part of the elements of the time. She fit in perfectly for the job that history had presented to her. And many of the visitors would come and say she made the best cup of coffee any place this side of the Mississippi. Other trees that have had huge impact in observations over the years. In Wyalusing, there was a silver maple that was on many postcards. This particular point at the convergence of the Wisconsin River and the Mississippi. Fort Crawford, I think it was, to the south. 

The military road coming in on the way up to Green Bay. A lot of the immigrants didn't come from the east, but, rather, they came up the Mississippi and then entered Wisconsin at that time by Prairie du Chien. That was a very important big tree that remained and stood there. And what it observed, those thousands of immigrants coming in along old Native American trails moving off in the other direction. And it also observed the change in nature that occurred with the change of environment. Down at the right there still remains a monument to the passenger pigeon. Owen Gromme loved that passenger pigeon. In this painting that he did called Distant Thunder, he describes what it must have been like when those passenger pigeons, which were the most dense population of any bird ever across the entire world, the passenger pigeon had tens, hundreds of thousands of birds that would migrate and fly in these huge clouds which early settlers would describe as blacking out the sun. It would be like darkness at noon. The passenger pigeons, you would think, could never ever go extinct, but you know what? Audubon loved that bird. 

He talked about that bird, and he actually drew it within chestnut trees and oaks because that's what their food was. That was their area where they would nest, where they would feed. Now, and as of 1914, that bird is extinct. An extinction is forever. There's not Jurassic Park that can take the DNA and recreate the dinosaurs, at least not yet, and I don't think it's ever going to happen with the passenger pigeon. The last one was Martha, here's an 1898 photograph, that was held in captivity. And today, all we have left to show our children and young people is a stuffed passenger pigeon. A beautiful bird; a big bird. Was it over-killed? Was it over-hunted? No. It couldn't have been. 

There's no way that happened. What happened was that its environment changed. All of those trees that were an integral part of that bird that coexisted, there was a synchronicity and a synopsis between that bird and that tree. They co-evolved. They worked together. When the immigrants came in, they cut down all of those trees. The beech trees particularly, which were important for the passenger pigeon, grow in only very fertile ground so the immigrants knew right away let's cut those down first to plant our crops. They weren't interested in the trees except to cut them down the first time to build something. The environment changed and when that environment changed, all those things dependent upon that environment changed. I think that's a lesson for us as we watch our environment change as a result of excess carbon dioxide in the air, and it affects us all. 

The Civil War was a very dramatic moment in Wisconsin's history, and you can't talk about these temporal markers, these trees that connected to the past, without talking about their connection to the Civil War period. We didn't have big hauls. In Delavan, there was a tree that was the mustering point where the early volunteers would gather and sign up and then get shipped off to Camp Randall for their early training and then off to the south to fight the war. Those trees occasionally will still exist. This one in Delavan still does where those 16, 17, 18-year-old boys gathered, many of whom never returned, whose lives were no doubt forever changed, stood beneath this tree. Now this tree stands by the chicken pizza place with asphalt all around it with only a plaque to remind those more observant people who are concerned about the past to know that there were other young people their age who stood beneath this tree for a different purpose. And I'm just hoping those young people get the message that we can tell the history to them through that tree, that that tree can talk to them, and they might imagine what it was like for those young people to go off to preserve this nation which we observe now. That's the story that this tree continues to tell. They get shipped off to Camp Randall. And this was the training ground for soldiers. 

And if you go now to the football games, you'll see that they still have some cannons there and some reference to what must have been during the Civil War period. And there was a tree growing for many years which was the Harvey Oak. Camp Randall, by the way, who knows why it's called Camp Randall? Randall was our first Civil War governor. So it was named after him. Our second Civil War governor was Harvey. This is Harvey's tree. Harvey had a very short term. When he'd became the governor, the Battle of Shiloh had occurred, there were many Wisconsinites who were in military hospitals, in tents down there, he wanted to go and support those young soldiers. So he took that arduous task to do down there, traveled by steamboat, by railroad for a short time, by horse. As he was passing across the Tennessee River, he stepped from a barge onto another barge and slipped, fell into the river. 

His body was found 50 miles downstream. We lost our second Civil War governor. The tree was named after him. His widow, Cordelia Harvey, who knows Cordelia Harvey? A hero of the highest order. I think every Wisconsinite, every child, should know the story of Cordelia Harvey. Carl Sandburg, who wrote the book, how are we doing time-wise here? Ten more minutes? Cordelia Harvey didn't want to let her husband's dream of supporting those young soldiers pass. She went to the generals and said I want to get better hospitals so these young boys can survive. And the generals said fine, we'll appoint you to be head of the hospital and hygiene for the Upper Mississippi River Valley. And, of course, this was a time when women couldn't even vote. They didn't have property rights. 

I don't think they were taken very seriously, but Cordelia Harvey was about to be taken seriously. She wanted not only to be in charge of the hygiene but she wanted hospitals to come back to Wisconsin because she knew if those soldiers could be treated in Wisconsin, they would survive. They weren't surviving. They were getting tetanus, they were getting malaria and other diseases. She knew if they were brought back here. The general said oh, no, we can't do that. If we were to have a wounded soldier come back, they'll go AWOL, they'll desert. She said they won't. They volunteered, let us take care of them. Rejected by the general, she went to Abraham Lincoln, and Abraham Lincoln, under her pressure, finally relented. 

Our first Civil War hospital back in the northern states was on Lake Monona. And this is a picture of it. After the war it was turned into an orphanage. Cordelia Harvey needs to have a tree named after her. She was truly one of those great heroes. And I'm going to skip over some just in knowing that we're running out of time here. The tea circle oak, you know the story of Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright, who said I mourn the loss of a tree sometimes more than I mourn the loss of a human being. He had that organic architecture connection. He built Taliesin on the brow of the hill, and there was the tea circle oak which was the oak that was on top of the hill. 

He built his architecture around a tree. I was on retainer for, like, 35 years, and I still am, out at the Taliesin. They have me come out to take a look at their trees, and Olgivanna Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright's widow back in 1980, she died in '85, but in '80 she brought me out, and I've been going out ever since and took care of that tea circle oak for many years. Hanerville oak, there was a single room schoolhouse, there was a tree in the front that those children would come out and play around. There was the need for the Department of Transportation to build a road there. They wanted to cut down the tree. The children protested. They wrote letters. They complained. They surrounded that tree when the people came to cut it down. 

And, of course, the Department of Transportation relented, and that's why, again, the tree stands in the middle of a road. What's progress? Cutting down trees and putting roads in or is progress having children who love the past so much that they would put their time and energy not in play but in the work of preserving what is culturally important to their families? And here are two little girls who are the granddaughters of one of the early Stoughton settlers by that tree and that plaque, and they can take great pride in what young children before them had done. Joyce Kilmer, who knew that he came to Wisconsin? He indeed, in Platteville there was a Campion Catholic seminary, and Joyce Kilmer was in conversation with them. He wanted to come there to teach after he had spent his time, he volunteered to go off to the first World War. You know this poem, it became hackney, but there's something beautiful about it. "I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree..." published in 1918, became a huge national hit. Kids were required in school to memorize this poem.  Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. He went off, in 1917, swearing that he would come back to Campion, and unfortunately, as can happen in war, he died. Buried in Flanders Field. 

Never came back but we still have his poem and the stories that are important. The disappearing tree, this was the last elm tree to come down on what was then State Street. Of course, it's now the Mall, ironically in front of the Wisconsin Historical Society. And thank goodness we have historical societies to be able to preserve these stories, otherwise they're lost. The University of Wisconsin with Gene Smalley didn't stop with the loss of the elms. They came up with disease resistant elms. And here's one planted by Prince Philip at Windsor Castle because the Queen so loved elms, and she heard about what we had done here at our university and asked that Gene Smalley personally deliver one of those Wisconsin trees, developed, by the way, with your tax dollars in Windsor Castle. So when the Queen next invites you to have tea at Windsor Castle, say, "Oh might we take a look at my tree growing out in your front lawn?" Aldo Leopold, the university department that I teach for, Wildlife Ecology, was formed by Aldo Leopold. "Sand County Almanac," Nina Leopold just recently died, but there she is as a young girl, I'm sure thinking to herself as her father, the great conservationist, is we need to plant pine trees on this old farm along the barren area of the Wisconsin River because it had been burned out by too much farming. And I'm sure she's thinking to herself, why the hell am I doing this? But in point of fact, it made all the difference. 

If you go to the shack now, and you can do that, and you see all those beautiful trees around there, Nina understood it later that it made all the difference that she needed to restore things. Another great tree that we had on campus for many years was a John Muir locust. John Muir, who formed the Sierra Club, wrote so many books of great importance, and really started the conservation movement in many ways, had his epiphinal moment beneath a tree by North Hall when he was a student at the university. He stepped out by this tree and a botany student by the name of Griswold pulled him over and said John Muir, take a look at this tree. This was in early June. Do you know what tree that is? And John goes no, I'm an engineering student, I have no idea. And he said you're a farmer, you should be able to, take a look at the flower. He took a look at the flower and said oh, yeah, it looks like a pea flower. And he said I've got you. The botany student, Griswold, said that's right, this is a locust tree. 

A black locust is related to the pea flower because of this connection called taxonomy that connects a rose to a crab apple, connected genetically. Taxonomy. Muir was so impressed that he decided at that moment to give up engineering and instead move into that area of conservation and spend the rest of his life traveling around, to the south initially, down to South America, but then eventually to California where he's made a huge impact on all of us. Perhaps was the most important influence when Roosevelt decided to create national parks, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and others. And here's that proof that indeed there is that connection, that there is that biological connection between one thing and another. And oddly enough, it's not just in the plant world. If you take a look at, on a molecular basis, the heme molecule in your hemoglobin, it's the same as the chlorophyll molecule except for one difference. The chlorophyll in the center has magnesium, and the center of our heme is iron. Iron red, magnesium green, otherwise we're the same. We are related to trees. 

Wakeland McNeel understood this. Ranger Mac, when the new technology of radio became available, he used that. He spoke to hundreds and hundreds of schools throughout Wisconsin to bring from the university the education and the knowledge to this new group of young people. He was a wonderful educator who knew how to use better technology and to speak to young people. When it came time for that John Muir locust to be cut down, the president of the university was EB Fred, and EB Fred was torn. He wanted to save an historical thing, but William Longenecker, you know Longenecker from the Longenecker Garden at the Arboretum, a horticultural professor, said I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about it. I only wish that we had the technology that I now have when I do my consulting on trees, but we didn't. They decided to cut it down. Wakeland McNeel fought against him. When I wrote these stories, I knew that people like Wakeland McNeel must have said something to EB Fred about this great tree. 

I went to the basement of the Memorial Union Library, blew the dust off the top of the boxes from EB Fred's old files, and pulled out a letter which Wakeland McNeel sent to EB Fred. EB Fred had that tree, when it was cut down, made into gavels and letter openers, and I knew that Wakeland McNeel probably got one. I read that letter and you have to hear this. "I do not know what we are going to do now that the tree is gone. It stood there as a tangible, effective, though silent spokesman of a turning point in a man's life, of a time of decision that made the outdoors his university and gave the world John Muir. A gavel shouts for order. This tree, in the grand silent manner of its waning strength secured order like a prayer. To stand beside the distorted tree body, to pat its wrinkled skin, to throw your arms about its scarred body was a memorable way to impress young folks gathered about that there lived a man like John Muir and that trees can do divine things."  And I tell that story to encourage people to plant new trees. Yes, trees have a finite life, but we have the ability in our urban environment to plant new trees so that those trees can also talk to the next generation that they will have their story to tell. Well, thank you very much for your time, and I'm, I think, just on time, 1 o'clock. 

Thank you so much. [APPLAUSE]