Washington is known as the city of trees, though no official body seems to agree on the actual numbers in what is called our tree canopy and whether the city's urban forest is growing or declining. Coming home from a lecture about Thoreau and trees at the U.S. Botanic Garden (he liked trees more than he did people), I was especially aware of the varied specimens bordering my walk uphill past the Capitol. I witnessed a veritable memory garden of botanical and political history. Like human fingerprints, none was alike in size or shape. Except that most of them carried unusual identity tags: little brass plaques.
These are commemorative trees planted to honor past Congress folk or a cause such as the
young linden tree dedicated to "the revolutionary spirit of New England." Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has her name under an American elm dedicated to 'the Greening of the Capitol Initiative" in 2008 (whatever that was). Farther along, on grounds of the Library of Congress' stately Thomas Jefferson Building, former Librarian James Billington contributed an acer, a Japanese maple, "in honor of the Congressional Research Service's Centennial" in 1914. Even a former head of the library's Hebraic division has a tree in his name.
On and on they went, until some sort of boundary was reached at Second Street SE. By focusing on such an aesthetic abundance around me, I was able for a short time to forget the inanities taking place inside the great building they surround. May the beauty created in this landscape have some calming effect on what transpires there. One thing for sure: most of these trees will outlast the people inside.
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