My friends at Brookside Nature Center in Wheaton say they hope to reopen this weekend. Their building has been closed since July 25, when a huge electrical storm made matchsticks of many trees in Wheaton Regional Park. The county was forced to cancel several summer day camp sessions at the park and many popular public programs in order to rebuild and dig out from the damage.
Brady Hartley, a MNCPPC naturalist who works at Brookside NC sent me a link to some photos she took the day after, when the storm subsided. Crews continue to work hard on the clean up, and she tells me that the roof damage has been repaired and carpenters are replacing the steps damaged by a fallen tree. They have made substantial progress since her photos were taken, which is a very good thing indeed.
Next door, Brookside Gardens also lost more than a dozen large trees. A prolonged power loss also meant that the popular Wings of Fancy exhibit was unable to open for four days. “The shut down has severely affected our visitor experience – disappointing many visitors wishing to see our fantastic butterfly exhibit and diminishing a significant source of revenue that helps us fund our garden and educational programs,” said an email sent out on the Thursday following the storm.
Ecologists call the storm that caused all this trouble a kind of “disturbance.” Ecological disturbance can come in many forms. Elephants, for example, rip up trees in Africa when they go on a rampage. Hurricanes criss-cross Florida in late summer sometimes. Fires, tornados, and even volcanoes erupting… all of these are “disturbance events” that help to transform ecosystems all over the globe.
The ecosystems which experience disturbance are full of opportunistic plants and animals. One of the most famous of these is the pines in the Western US that will only open to drop seeds once a fire has heated their cones to a certain temperature. Less famous here in the eastern Mid-Atlantic are those seeds and root stocks that wait and wait for sunshine. When a tree goes down, it opens up opportunity for them to sprout and take center stage, so to speak. Where once only shade loving plants would thrive, a tree seedling or flowering perennial suddenly makes it way out of the soil and begins to grow. Meadows open up and the cycle of forest succession turns around again. Where once it was dark cool shade, suddenly warm open sunshine provides nectar rich plants that butterflies and bees will not doubt soon enjoy. The next generation of trees reach out for the sunshine, too, and begin to take strong root.
To everything, turn, turn, turn there is a season, turn, turn turn…
But honestly, when you live in an urban area, though, tree losses due to storms are hard to witness, and no amount of soothing harmonies from the sixties seem to help ease the ache of watching a particularly lovely oak, hickory or maple that has been around for fifty years or more fall in a mere matter of moments.
If your yard only measures a few feet across and you spend a lot of time in the local park walking under the trees, you know them all like friends. The tree where the trail turned in an elbow angle, the hollow place 15 feet up where the flying squirrels raised their young, the hickory that filled a whole spot of the park with butter yellow leaves each October…. Watching them fall to the ground is upsetting. A heightened awareness of the fact that the forest is dynamic, ever-changing and on an agenda stretching beyond our lifetimes is a bit unsettling.
Because both Brookside and Wheaton Regional are both placed square in the middle of urban development, they provide respite for both animals eager to find habitat and humans anxious to find refreshment for the mind, soul and body. Their trees make life here a bit easier, a bit greener, a bit cleaner and a bit more bearable. Losing so many trees at once is not really something we want to happen on a frequent basis.
And while I have no doubt that interesting things will come up in the new pockets of sunshine, I also worry about the already tight budgets of our parks. There are no new pockets of revenue out there, ready to sprout. One can only hope for the best and advocate for the future of these two important community assets.
And I suppose, keep planting trees wherever and whenever possible.
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