Social

We were joined on our walk the woods by Mik, a Chesapeake Master Gardener named Ed Bradley, and Jean-Marie Eagler, president of the Arboretum. Once Mik, a tall man with a Hungarian accent, decided we were okay, he started in on the jokes.

“You can always tell a dogwood by its bark,” he said. But my favorite was:

“If I’m walking through the woods by myself, and my wife doesn’t hear me, am I still always wrong?”

(He’ll be in the woods all week long, folks.)

We spent a leisurely couple of hours among the trees. Conversation came easy. When I asked Mik why he got into this line of business he said, “I used to dress like a tree in the Marines. Now I take care of the trees.”

The only background noises were the leaves crunching under our feet and the branches rustling above us. Could anything be more perfect? All second dates should be a walk through the forest, I thought. The first date can have food or a movie as a distraction. But the second date–that’s when people rely on their words.

I spent a summer living in Yosemite National Park when I was 19. I’m still close with my two main hiking friends from that summer, and I lay the credit to that more to the sacredness of the redwoods than I do anything else.

Aesthetic

Four out of five senses are engaged in the most subtle of ways in the Arboretum. Visually it is stunning; green and gold and glowing with life. The air is still and silent and feels brisk, invigorating. And the arboretum even smells clean–it smells good, it smells natural, it smells real.

My happiest sense, somewhat surprisingly, was that of touch. I loved touching the trees. The beech felt like elephant skin. Ironwood, also known as musclewood, felt just like its name, almost like a strong arm was flexing just underneath the bark. But be careful, though, of the gnarly, scrambling shrubs for which Greenbrier got its name.

“If you were walking through here at night,” Ed warned us, “you’d be torn to shreds.”

Functional

Though it stands tall on its aesthetic merits alone, the Arboretum serves its societal purpose as well. It provides the City of Chesapeake with its trees. Recently a number of trees were transported to Centerville Park, for example.

On the day we visited, we were first met by a group of youngsters doing community service hours as part of the Volunteer Advocates for Chesapeake Youth program, allowing these juvenile offenders to get out of their environments and into a place where they might be more likely to find some peace.

The purest function of the Arboretum, though, is its benefit to our health. Expanses of true nature such as this enrich our air with oxygen and promotes a robust environment in which people can thrive. Pure and simple.

Economic

Certainly, the history of people is seen through horticulture–for instance, the proliferation of invasive, foreign plant species.

We came across sassafras, which was thought to be the first cash crop of the colonists. The Indians said it was a cure-all for all ailments, so bushels of it were brought back to England in the holds of the ships.

“That fad died after five years when they realized it didn’t work,” Ed said.

The presence of green space also has a direct economic effect on an area’s value. These neighborhoods and cities are inherently deemed safer, more beautiful, and in them grow healthier communities.

You'd never guess this little baby will grow to be several stories high.

The author and a vine.

Recreational

The Arboretum is set back in the Chesapeake suburbs. Still, it’s three and a half miles of trails and 40 acres of land are gloriously secluded.

Sure it’s a great place for a hard run, or a dog walk. But what the Arboretum really brings the area, what it is perhaps most important for, is a place where you can just get away. In these woods that nasty fax from your co-worker seems just stupid; the guy who cut you off on the road is now miles way; there’s no mail to open and there’s no one to impress. It’s just you and Nature. And nothing can make you aware of how small our problems are than that.

“A lot of people don’t even get to see really tall trees,” says Ed, “which I think is nice in and of itself.”

But I think Jean-Marie put it best, when she said the Arboretum gives her “connectivity to God’s creation.”

“It brings a peace in which all the rumbles of day-to-day life are gone.”

Miklos Lestyan, City Arborist/Urban Forester

Jean-Marie Eagler, president of the Arboretum

Chesapeake Master Gardener Ed Bradley

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