I’m a sucker for a good goldenrod plant. The bright yellow inevitably pops against the color of the surrounding foliage in a way that you only start really appreciating once you start looking for it everywhere you go. You see it everywhere in Ohio; it’s not an uncommon plant. Still, I always get a pang of nostalgia for days spent rummaging in the woods behind my aunt Terry’s house and coming across the weed-like plant. At Johnson’s Woods, there are a handful peeking out just by the entrance before you walk into a sea of green. (Green leaves, brown bark, blue piece of gum stuck to the trunk of a tree.) The colors inside Johnson’s Woods are stunning, of course–looking up at the tops of trees towering over my mere 5’7″ frame makes me feel small in the awe-inspiring way only particularly cool bits of nature can. But the flowers are what have stuck with me.
The flowers, and the graffiti. The standard initials were annoying at first, but as I began collecting notes of the more outrageous comments, a simple “KW + ER” was the least of my concern. Some had returned to mark out their partners names in the ultimate statement of a broken heart. On one tree, someone etched “Van Halen” in big bold font. Another had taken the time to write out “Will you be my bitch?” in an attempt at what I can only imagine to be romance. Worse yet, one tree featured a carefully carved swastika. It just makes me wonder what could possibly be going through folks’ minds–white supremacy isn’t exactly an easy topic to fully grasp, sure, but who took the time and effort to etch “Kansas” into a beech with no context? Why did someone find it pressing enough to write “lemon” into a tree, to be left there for future guests to find? Why vandalize a tree at all–what do you gain, other than a few splinters? We all want to make our mark–but is here really the place? Is anywhere really the place when the outcome is just a blow to the natural landscape? Where do we draw the line?
