To the Editor
Our daughter who works overseas was stunned to hear of the proposed culling of trees on Mattapoisett’s Heritage Waterfront. She sent us this letter for publication. It reflects the sentiments of our family.
Kevin and Laura McLean
I am Olivia McLean, and if I may take a respectful seat beside the Lorax, I’d like to also speak for the trees.
I’m typing this from my apartment, on a busy street alongside a bustling city square near the center of Paris. This is the fourth city I’ve called home in the past 15 years after London, New York, Los Angeles and Boston. And as I type out these cities and think of my collective dwellings, I have memories past and present of metros and museums, long days at the office and longer evenings at the afterwork milieu, and, inevitably, some sort of unfortunate apartment infestation of rodents or insects.
I’ve never had the good fortune, or substantial bank account balance, to live within proximity to a major park in any of these world capitals – which is the case for most city dwellers. Rather, my tree-lined, garden-strolling memories rest in my heart and hometown of Mattapoisett Massachusetts. During my trips home I indulge in walking barefoot in the grass or arranging a fresh bouquet of flowers from my parent’s garden – meditating on the sights, sounds, smells and sensations that substantially support the mantra ‘there’s no place like home.’
A proposal to remove generations-old trees from the heart of Mattapoisett’s village is an atrocity. Ever a cinematic mind, I think of the dramatically depressing village transformations in such films as It’s A Wonderful Life or Back to the Future 2 both with infamous scenes of the film’s protagonists discovering drastic destruction to their hometowns.
The removal of these trees would be the tip of the iceberg of more ominous changes to come for Mattapoisett village – if anything we should be looking at incentives to introduce more nature to our beautiful town, to plant more trees and preserve the precious natural landscape as best we can. Each tree has a memory for someone in this village. Removing them is taking away our only permanent living population of this lovely town we are extremely fortunate to call our home.
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