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From Robert Jandl, M.D., Director of Health Services:

Recently, we decided to do a bit of landscaping in the backyard. There is this area where a spring emerges and trickles through a stretch of muddy ground overgrown with pussy willows and poplar trees. It's a little rough looking, not terribly pretty, and it seemed to us a perfect place to plant a willow tree. Willows are lovers of moisture, and we imagined that someday there would be a giant willow tree with roots all gnarled and twisted, a great trunk turning towards the sky, and masses of weeping leaves falling in cascades toward the lawn.

I carefully staked out the right spot: close, but not too close, to the stream; on the border of the grass, but not actually in the lawn. I wrote the name of the tree on the stake and pounded it in with an axe. The tree was ordered and the men delivered it: a fine 14-foot specimen. They unseated my stake from its original location, and used the stake to prop up the tree until it could be planted the following day. As luck would have it, a different crew arrived the next day — and planted the tree in the place where the stake had been used as a prop, rather than where the ground was originally marked. So there it is, beautifully planted, supported, with mulch around the base — in the wrong spot.

No problem. Call the guys and have them move it. Not a big deal at all. Besides, it is only off by about five feet. Yet here I am two weeks later, uncertain, tentative, wondering whether or not to leave it where it is. I look at the tree every day, trying to make up my mind. You see, right now the tree looks beautifully planted. It's in a great spot relative to the plants and trees around us, and its placement has created a natural area for an shady garden. Right now, and for the next five years or so, I would actually prefer to leave it where it is. In that sense, the planting was a fortuitous accident.

But what happens ten years from now, or twenty, or forty? The tree will become huge, and it appears to my eye that the five feet one way or another will make all the difference in the world as to whether or not a view of the mountains from the house will be preserved. So I find myself in a philosophical quandary, wondering whether I should leave the tree where it is and enjoy its beauty now, or move it to the other location where it won't be as attractive now but will be an annoyance down the road. I have read that the great designers of parks and gardens, people like Frederick Law Olmsted (who designed Boston Garden and New York's Central Park), planned their plantings according to how they would look in a hundred years. What will the next generation, the next resident of my house, think of my plantings? Should I even care?

The question hints at my age, which is somewhere in the "middle years" — no Generation X-er me. Not to mention the fact that landscaping is about the farthest thing from the minds of most of my co-workers at Tripod. Yet I find it interesting that the older I get, the more serious I am about the future. I am thinking more and more of doing things that stand the test of time. I have hurriedly constructed many things in my day, just to get the job done. I wanted results fast and rushed to achieve them. But in no time at all, these hastily constructed projects revealed their structural weaknesses, fell apart, or rotted. It made me feel small. Now I stare in fascination at the stone walls that dot our New England mountainsides, hundreds of years old, marveling at the work and time that went into these simple but sturdy structures. I ask myself, What will I leave for posterity, and what durable impact will my life have anywhere?

It's the age-old question. Live your life for the satisfaction it brings today? Or plan for the future, and create things whose natural beauty and effects will only be enjoyed by future generations? I sit here now, staring at my young and handsome willow, wondering.

Best regards,
"Dr. Bob" (5/22/98)
Rob Jandl, MD

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Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.