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October 2016
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Trees are a Tool to Fight Inequality
By: Matt Buland
October 1, 2016
I come to an abrupt stop. A
complete standstill. I’m at that stark divide where the outstretched arms of
the magnificent green giant above me can no longer reach. The cool, dappled, light and dark shades of the grays, greens, and assorted colors are no more. Only
blinding brightness is ahead. I shade my eyes and peer into the intense sunlight.
I see shade! My muscles tense up and… BANG!!! I’m off, like a runner at a track
meet, sprinting at peak physical exertion only slowing as I reach my finish
line of cool, comfortable, shady relief.
This silly pattern of slowly
walking (you might even say loitering) in the shade and then sprinting through
the sun drenched areas to the next shady spot was repeated daily on my walks
home from school. While growing up in the quiet, safe, and well-tree’d neighborhood
of River Park, my greatest troubles, for the most part, were those in-between
shady times. My life revolved around the neighborhoods and intermingled
shopping centers that hugged the American River. Rich soils and comfortable
lifestyles led to a wonderful vegetated urban living space. This was my
Sacramento.
But this wasn’t everyone’s
Sacramento. I distinctly remember an emergency trip to the South Sacramento
post office, the only one still open at that hour. As we zipped along Martin
Luther King Jr. Boulevard, I noticed a stark landscape. It was hard to call it a
landscape at all. This hot, angular, and gray people-scape seemed foreign to my
understanding of space and place. And, as my world further expanded, enduring long
bus rides on public transportation to Mira Loma High School, I observed many
neighborhoods that bore more resemblance to the images of asphalt, brick, and
concrete that I associated with dense urban cores like Los Angeles. The
contrasts spoke to me.
This smacked of unfairness and inequality. These communities did not have the feeling of comfort I was used to. They
felt harsh and unforgiving. As I contemplated universities and majors, Cal
Poly’s City and Regional Planning program seemed like a pathway for change. We
studied form and space. We sought to define the design principles that made a
place into a community. In those discussions, at least from my end, tree’s
reigned supreme and a need to balance and merge the built environment with the natural
world became a personal ethic.
It has been a long journey to
find a place where I can apply that ethic. The Sacramento Tree Foundation has
given me that avenue. I facilitate empowerment daily. I re-balance. I provide
tools for equality. It is exciting to see communities connect, unify, bond, and
strengthen around the common good of sturdy shade trees. Certainly trees cannot
possibly solve each and every ill, but they are a great start. There should be
no marathons, only short sprints to the next shade tree. BANG!!! We’re off.