It was not a conservationist’s favorite sight.
Heavy equipment rumbled across the landscape, chewing rapaciously through a stand of second-growth firs while log trucks and graders idled nearby.
Tacked high on a tree – one that had yet to be felled, or was simply outside the clearing zone – hand-painted signs read “CELEBRATE EARTH DAY – KILL A FOREST” and “WE KILLED THIS FOREST FOR BASEBALL.” The swath cut by the machinery was such that a neighbor was moved to stride through City Hall with a roaring chainsaw (in fairness, sans chain) to protest what he apparently saw as the senseless destruction of a cherished corner of his island environment.
That was April 2001, as construction of new ball fields got under way on Sands Avenue. We thought back to those days this past Saturday afternoon, as ballplayers and parents feted the newly opened field with a dedication and picnic. Standing in foul ground (and at a safe distance), we watched a succession of enthusiastic young batters send the ball flying in impossible arcs across a different sort of green than once covered this same ground – the immaculately groomed baize of a diamond and outfield.
And we wondered what our sign-painter, if they still reside in the community, might be thinking on this day?
At the risk of committing some grave heresy in our current political climate, we would have to say that the forest was lost for the community good.
Not least because construction of much-needed ball fields on Sands Avenue was itself a conservation project. Coupled with the development of a park at Hidden Cove, the project ended an increasingly bitter debate over the possibility of clearing the southeast corner of the Gazzam Lake preserve for ball-field use.
We’re not sure that would placate our sign-painter, for it is tempting to see every lost tree as symbolizing some failure of political will or subversion of local process. In so doing, we risk lives of anxiety over changes that others see as desirable, and that in any event are inevitable in a growing community.
Too, in our haste to lament, we tend to overlook our many successes. Since the Sands property was cleared, nearly 40 acres of woodlands elsewhere on the island have been put under protective conservation easements. Blakely Harbor Park has grown by 18 acres – all forest. The city has used open space funds to purchase a healthy woodland off Wing Point Way, and has been gifted with a 15-acre tree farm; several other large wooded parcels are being eyed for
public acquisition even as we pen this commentary.
True, other stands have been carved into for private development, including several that had been growing on borrowed time in high-density Winslow. But that can in turn invigorate the cause of preservation. Would our open space bond levy have passed without some sense of collective urgency?
Our sign-painter of April 2001 was correct: the forest was lost for the sake of youth baseball and soccer. And we don’t think that will prove a bad thing. Sands Field is a tremendous new community asset, and will bring island families together for years in a way the forest never would have. In the fullness of time, other forests are being saved.
From this dynamic is our community being built.
