In this bipolar political world we inhabit, it is hard to avoid being pinned with some kind of label. For example, I am routinely described as “liberal”, whereas I would describe myself as an unincorporated amalgam of at least all of the following: Liberal, cautious, skeptic, frugal, intellectual, laborer, anarchist, enlightened redneck.
One thing that I have never considered myself to be is a “tree-hugger”, which is not to say that I am oblivious of the need to conserve. My wife, Kristy, and I live moderately. We have three operating vehicles: 2003 VW Jetta, 2007 VW Eos, 1983 VW pickup. The two newer cars have 4-cylinder gas engines that will get in excess of 30 mpg on the highway, without sacrificing power. The VW diesel pickup just got a solid 40 mpg on a test run.
Kristy and I keep the house thermostat low in the winter and high in the summer. We have a whole house fan. I am well-acquainted with the crawl-space under the roof, and have spent many hours augmenting the insulation. I hate paying PG&E, and I do believe it is best to conserve energy.
At our house, we don’t buy much stuff, and we throw away even less. When we get tired of eating left-overs, the doggies get them. We compost all vegetable matter from the kitchen, and everything except tree branches from the yard.
After starting this post, it occurred to me that there are some particular trees that I am quite fond of. When I was a 4th grader at Independent School, I became the proud recipient of a Ponderosa Pine seedling. I planted it in a vacant stretch of our yard. By the mid 90’s it was 35 feet tall and about 16 inches in diameter at the base. Then came the big storm in 1997. When the storm ended, the tree was listing at a 45-degree angle, threatening my Mom’s garage. I drove over from Chico with my chainsaw. I tied the tree off with a rope, and then climbed up and cut off the top of the tree. Back on the ground, I hitched a come-along to the tree and cranked until it was as near straight as I could make it. I then tied a rope to the fence and secured the tree with a trucker’s knot. It stayed that way till the ground got hard in late spring. After a year or two, the tree sent a branch up that replaced the missing treetop.
I guess the reason that I went to all that trouble to save the tree is that I was sort of attached to it. Maybe I am a damn tree-hugger after all.
