The Woods Are Lovely . . . and Dark

My favorite tree in Washington isn't a mighty oak or a beautiful, blossoming cherry. I'm not sure what kind of tree it is, actually -- some kind of trash tree, I suppose, an opportunistic species that grows best in vacant lots, a disturbed tree for disturbed soil.

I first spied it about 10 or 11 years ago out the right-hand window of a Metro train, in the stretch of landscape between Rhode Island Avenue and Union Station. This area used to be particularly blighted, a weedy scrubland full of trash and rusting vehicles. The perfect emblem to me was the Sanitary Grocery Co. building. Its broken windows and disfiguring graffiti made it look anything but sanitary.

One day, I noticed that things had been cleaned up: the trash removed and the weeds mowed, as if sandpaper had scoured everything flat. A few months later, I saw a tree rising from the denuded ground.

I've watched that tree grow ever since. Today, it's 15 or 20 feet tall and currently has light purple blossoms. I look up from whatever I'm reading to watch it as I go by.

Of course, one of the better places for trees in town is Rock Creek Park. The other day, Ranger Dan Winings showed me around.

The most common tree in the park is beech. It has a smooth light-colored bark. Next is tulip. There are a lot of oaks (white and black) and hickories, some sycamores and elms and hollies. No chestnuts, sadly, given that they all died in the great blight of the early 20th century.

Rock Creek Park wasn't always a heavily forested swath of land. There was a time that it had hardly any trees at all, Dan said. That was after the old growth forest had been cut down. Farmers felled trees to plant crops. During the Civil War, soldiers cut down trees to better spot an approaching enemy and fire guns at him. The Rock Creek forest we see today is only about 140 years old, though Dan showed me a few trees twice as old as that, including a gnarled white oak not far from the Nature Center.

"I like it 'cause it's so big," Dan said as we stood under its impressive canopy and admired the knobby bumps sprouting from its trunk. "It has character."

If you have a favorite tree in Rock Creek Park, or any of the other parks the National Park Service administers in the District, park rangers want you to paint, draw or photograph it. They're collecting entries between now and March 16, 2008, and will be choosing some to exhibit in the Nature Center, on Glover Road, in honor of next year's Arbor Day.

For complete rules, call 202-895-6070 or visit http://www.nps.gov/rocr.

The Dark Side of Trees

Two weeks ago, a Pepco crew showed up at Amy and Larry Mitchell's Silver Spring house to restore their power after a tree had fallen in an early morning windstorm. Not only had the hickory taken down the electrical wires, it also landed on the hood of their Jeep, tipping the rear wheels high in the air, the way a fat kid raises a skinny kid on a teeter-totter.

"Hey, didn't you have a tree crush your van a year ago?" the Pepco guy said.

Actually, it was two years ago, Larry said.

"I was the guy who restarted your power."

Two years ago during a summer thunderstorm, Amy sat with her three kids -- Elise, David and Luke-- in her Chrysler Town & Country minivan when a branch plummeted from an oak tree next to the driveway, totaling the van. Miraculously, no one was hurt.

Nor was anyone hurt a few years before that, when two trees from a neighbor's yard smashed the kids' jungle gym not long after they'd been playing on it. And a year before that, a tree fell on their property. The trees seem to have it in for the Mitchells.

Amy is unfazed. "You can't go around being afraid to stand under a tree all your life," she said. "It shows how much control you really have. Enjoy your life because you never know. . . . "

Larry's been telling people that if they want to get rid of their vehicle, just park it in his driveway.