By MITCH TRAPHAGEN
A peer-reviewed research study published in July found that trees are more than just nice things to look at or to sit under for shade. They can also help you to be healthier and wealthier.
MITCH TRAPHAGEN PHOTO
Dody names some of her trees. She loves them all on the ranch she shares with her husband and each of her children has a tree in their name. Set amongst beautiful rolling hills, there are probably hundreds of them. Her favorite is a cottonwood tree, just off her back deck. In the breeze it speaks. She listens.
Dody is 80 years old and is as beautiful today as in photos of her when she was 20. She has no secret but there are a few factors that may play a role in that. One is who she is: Dody has a beautiful outlook and spirit — and a beautiful spirit never ages. Another could well be the natural scenic beauty she lives with, and more specifically, the trees.
It turns out that trees could well be very good for you, in terms of health and even financially.
Dody’s husband is a retired member of congress who represented his district in a Midwestern state in the U.S. House of Representatives — a job he never took for granted. It was a responsibility he took on solely to serve — his nation and both those who voted for him and those who did not.
Even approaching 80, he flew home from Washington, D.C. every weekend. When he landed, he hit the ground running, meeting people at businesses, colleges, grocery stores — anywhere and everywhere, always listening. His schedule would be punishing for a man half his age. But he had that ranch and those trees.
When he bought his ranch many years ago he found a place on a creek that ran through his land that he felt was something special. He is a man of deep faith, involved in his church, his community and his country. And with that, he found a quiet place that somehow felt different, special.
Not long after, a group of elderly Native American men knocked on his door and told him that there was an ancient encampment site and, more importantly, a sacred site on his land. Would he allow them to visit it? “Of course,” he told the men. He followed them out as they walked to the special place he had found. That place was their sacred site.
They asked if they could return sometime to visit it again. He told them that they were welcome anytime — and that he would put up a gate and paint it white so they would always know how and where to go to get to the site.
The years passed, he went to Washington and the elderly men eventually passed on. He heard nothing more about anyone visiting the site.
Autumnal landscape by a road
And then, not long ago, he went out to the site and saw that the gate could use some paint and he re-painted it white. Not long after, a man knocked on his door to thank him. He said he had visited the site as a child and found the newly painted white gate leading to the sacred site amongst the trees next to a creek.
The Congressman served two tours of duty as an attack helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He served in both his state and in the federal government — first a highly dangerous life and then a strenuous one. He visits that site today for the quiet that sinks into his soul.
In a peer-reviewed study published by Omid Kardan, Peter Gozdyra, Bratislav Misic, Faisal Moola, Lyle J. Palmer, Tomáš Paus and Marc G. Berman in Scientific Reports and available on the web at nature.com, the researchers determined statistically that nature — and trees in particular — are more than just nice things to look at. Studying neighborhoods in Toronto, a large metropolitan area, they found that trees could be statistically tied to better health, a better emotional state and even improved finances.
The researchers state, “…analyses suggest that people who live in neighborhoods with a higher density of trees on their streets report significantly higher health perception and significantly less cardio-metabolic conditions (controlling for socio-economic and demographic factors). We find that having 10 more trees in a city block, on average, improves health perception in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $10,000 and moving to a neighborhood with $10,000 higher median income or being 7 years younger.”
They went on to state that, statistically, adding 11 trees would further decrease cardio-metabolic conditions comparable to a $20,000 increase in personal income.
More simply put, their findings suggest that even in a high-density population environment, trees not only make you feel better and happier, they can help you to be healthier and wealthier.
And there is more still. The city of Melbourne, Australia assigned email addresses to trees in the city. According to an article in The Atlantic CityLab, the program was intended for residents to report problems such as broken branches. Instead, the trees began receiving what they described as “love letters.”
From The Atlantic article, one such letter was a virtual sympathy card:
To: Golden Elm, Tree ID 1037148
21 May 2015
I’m so sorry you’re going to die soon. It makes me sad when trucks damage your low hanging branches. Are you as tired of all this construction work as we are?
According to the Florida Forestry Association, about half of Florida’s land area is covered with trees, roughly 17.3 million acres. The state’s fast-growing urban areas, however, are sometimes lacking in green space, a subject that has in recent times become a concern to urban planners.
There is a place in nature that brings peace to a man who faced live fire while sitting behind the bubble window of a helicopter, who went above and beyond in serving his nation, and who generously offered his land to people for whom there was something special. There is a place where a cottonwood tree speaks in the breeze. Statistics show findings but seeing and experiencing it provides proof.
On her 80th birthday, looking as beautiful and as radiant as she did at 20 because a beautiful spirit never ages, and trees have been a part of her life for nearly all of her life, Dody pointed to a tree behind her house and said, “We can call that one Mitch.”
Suddenly I felt at least 7 years younger.
The full research article “Neighborhood greenspace and health in a large urban center” is available on the web at www.nature.com/articles/srep11610
The Atlantic CityLab article is available at tinyurl.com/observer-emailtree
Full disclosure: The U.S. Congressman referred to in this article once employed me and he remains a close friend today.
MITCH TRAPHAGEN PHOTO
