April
6, 2014
Calamus,
Nebraska to Columbia, Missouri
We bid a fond farewell to the Switzers
and hit the road after breakfast Sunday.
The spare landscape of the prairies has grown on us, but by midday, we have left the sand hills and the prairies behind, and reentered a world with rocks and lots of trees.
In fact, by lunchtime we are celebrating
trees, as we dine at an Adirondack-style lodge owned by the National Arbor Day
Foundation in Nebraska City, the birthplace of Arbor Day on April 10,
1872.
Our table is next to a window
overlooking Arbor Lodge State Historical Park and the 52-room White House
replica home of J. Sterling Morton, the man who originated Arbor Day in
America. On the first Arbor Day back in 1872,
one million trees were planted in Nebraska.
I can remember getting a tiny seedling tree
at school each Arbor Day, although Dick says they never gave kids trees to
plant in the Arizona desert. Those little seedlings are still propagated on the
campus of the Arbor Day Foundation here, and distributed nation-wide. What percent of those trees ever survive to
maturity? None of the seedlings the Ward
girls brought home from school and planted in the back yard ever survived more
than a month or two.
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