Every Tree Has a Story 

“Seventeen years ago, I lost my husband to a very rare cancer. It was October and I found myself walking in the woods. The trees were starting to fall away with their fall leaves, but the ground was still mossy green. It really gave me a new perspective that there's four seasons in a year here in Pennsylvania. The trees were losing their leaves and winter was coming, but spring was ahead. There was new life, and that really instilled in me just this passion for trees and nature. It really helped me move through that grief in so many ways.” 

"Reflecting on the hurricane devastation, it really was hard to lose those trees because some of them were big heritage oak trees. I've climbed or fallen out of most of them as a kid, so you have memories with them. We think of trees as being good for the environment, but they can be emotional too, especially when you grow up in a community like this.”  

“I have planted thousands of trees — and out of the thousands of trees, I planted hundreds of memorial trees for people. I planted a memorial tree on my property for my wife who passed away in September of 2023, and I think I felt finally the emotions of what everyone else was feeling when I was planting a tree for their loved one. And I spent a long time yesterday, and it was sort of a ritual with this tree, and I think it really landed for me because it was more than the tree. It was what the tree is, which is a promise, what it can do, how long it's going to be here.” 

“One of my favorite trees in the county is an old-growth tanoak along a ridge on a road called Dune Grade. Its branches dip into the ground, grow through it, and then rise back up again. Tanoaks are naturally resilient to wildfire and have deep cultural significance. That tree shows the history and the beautiful stories trees can hold — especially old-growth trees, which we want to protect. That’s one of the trees I think about most.”

“When I was growing up, we lived down Highway 6, basically in the middle of nowhere. We lived in a trailer, and right in the front yard was this giant, beautiful tree. My siblings, cousins, and I would play around it. It was a little too big to climb. When it rained, there would be this huge puddle — we thought it was a lake because we were so small. We’d play underneath that tree in the mud.”

“My tree story is a 90-year-old dogwood in front of my house. Dogwoods aren’t big trees, but this one is. It’s impressive. People walk by and say, ‘That’s a great dogwood.’ Right now, it has brilliant white flowers. A few weeks after Hurricane Helene, a woman stopped by and told me this was her aunt’s house. Her aunt had raised her family here and wanted to know if the dogwood was still standing. She called her aunt, and we talked. She told me her father dug that dogwood up from Pisgah National Forest in the 1930s and planted it as a sapling. It’s my favorite tree. I hope it lives much longer. It’s a real testament to the resilience of trees on our landscape.”