For the construction of Collège du Martinet in Rolle, CH, a giant, centuries old Sequoia tree is uprooted. A slab of its wood is taken away and industrially treated like a dead body being prepared for burial, before being brought back to the site and integrated into the stairwell of the building, at the same place where the tree was rooted.
I feel conflicted about this. Am I the only one?
According to the site: “Living memory, the tree becomes a monument. Witness of the history of the place, it presents, like an open book, that is to say to those who can decipher them, the traces left in its stump and its rings and thus makes visible the strata of time.”
First, is a slab of wood enbalmed within a wall really a LIVING memory of this tree? Where are the stress-relieving and feel-good hormones it activates in us? Where’s the immune boost? The oxygen we need to breathe? Where is the birdsong in its branches, the squirrel nests, the fox’s den and all the other many, many organisms that called it home?
Was it really necessary for this giant tree to fall? Could the building not be moved slightly? Could the tree not have been integrated into the building, allowed to stand as a real life rather than a memory, a mere monument?
If the tree had to go, why not give it back to nature, allow it to naturally decay, to feed the soil and serve as a home for many? Instead, an enormous amount of energy was used to transport the tree to an industrial facility where it was treated with chemicals, preparing it much like we preserve our own dead for burial because, even in our death, we can’t give ourselves back to nature.
If college is a place where our children are prepared for the future, what is this teaching them? That only humans have rights, so it’s okay? Or maybe it’s okay just this once, just for them?
Do we want our children to inherit a world without any wildness left, where every living thing is either extinct or within our control? Where trees grow only in straight lines, like being bred for slaughter?
On the other hand, perhaps a student might one day stop on this college staircase and acknowledge the great life that fell. Would s/he wonder if there were other trees on this land too, not just the one Sequoia who at least received some recognition? Would this lead her to other important questions, necessary change?
I have to consider my own life too. On the land where my house stands, who lived here before?
