This is an opinion column

There was another tornado. It took out lots of trees. And we miss those trees, even after they’ve crashed onto our house during a storm, tearing down power lines and leaving us in the dark. We look around at where they used to stand tall, but now they’re lying down like wounded soldiers in some war nature fought in. All that’s left is a huge hole where the root ball was and before that, the ball itself, looking like a giant’s fist lying on the ground.

This recent tornado in Huntsville didn’t slam my neighborhood the way it did last year, unless you count downed power lines and chilly showers in the dark for three days. But it did slam Monte Sano, the magic mountain we look up and see each morning. Sometimes the thick fog clouds our vision, but most days the trees are visible and green in this season of almost summer. I don’t know how many the storm took, but there are far fewer trees now.

The city workers, the volunteers, and those who use the hiking trails came up the mountain to help, bringing their muscles and machines and chain saws. They removed some of the trees from the roads, the yards, and even the roofs of houses. Mountain dogs, used to their quiet walks in a familiar landscape, jerk at the end of the leash. They want to race back home and get away from the grinding noise of the chain saws up and down the road, buzzing in such disharmony. But the saws get the job done.

And each time there’s a storm, people say they’re going to move to a place where there are no trees, or they’re going to cut down the ones that remain on the property so as to avoid tree damage next time. And weather predictors say there will be a next time. But people rarely move away from their woodsy homes to a denuded development where there’s no shade and no shelter from the Alabama summer sun. Until they are old, most people stay where they are, hoping the trees do the same, growing old along with them.

Why are we so drawn to trees even when they can fall on us, causing damage or even death? Maybe it’s because we have memories of tree houses our fathers built, those secret places where children could sit in calm privacy and stare down at the busy adult world without being seen.

Maybe it’s because tree trunks were where games of hide and seek started or maybe the shelter of trees was where our mothers told us to take our picnics and get out of the house for awhile. Maybe it’s because trees are a marker, a destination. Nobody says, “Meet me at the telephone pole.” They say, “Meet me at the oak tree.” And nobody ties a yellow ribbon around a utility pole like in that popular song from the 70s.

When people say it’s smart to cut down the rest of the old trees in our yard since they might fall with the next big storm, I think that’s like asking your dentist to pull all of your teeth because you have a big cavity in one. I want to leave our stand of trees alone. They sometimes shelter a doe and her fawns when they wander off Monte Sano into our yard. The mother leaves them under the trees while she forages for food for her babies.

I don’t know how old our remaining trees are, but I did learn this: The world’s oldest tree, Methuselah, is a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine that grows in the White Mountains of eastern California. It’s almost 5,000 years old. Its location is kept secret so tourists won’t harm it or carve their initials into its bark.

Trees are connected through their root system, and they share resources when they need to, acting like a community of caring, living things. This seems to be working. Instead of cutting down old trees, maybe we can learn from them.

Contact Beth Thames at [email protected]