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We don’t own the trees, but the shade is ours

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE

Why do Americans believe they own the world?

It’s my understanding (and I fudge that away because I’ve never talked to an American Indian who was any more expert than I am in matters of property rights) —

It’s my understanding that the Indians who met the first Europeans were bewildered by the Europeans’ mindset that they could stick a stake in the ground and claim for themselves the plot of land surrounded by a string running from here to there and around the big rock, and tied off on that pin oak.

The palefaces proclaimed this their own, to do with as they wished. The puzzled Indians watched them draw up titles and say, “From now on, you stay away from our property or we’ll shoot you with our thunder sticks. Are we still up for that banquet we talked about, next Thursday around 6? Great. Have a nice day.”

We’ve escalated land-ownership laws to an art form since those early days of “settling” the continent.

I read not long ago about a tribe that had lived on their tiny island in the southeast Pacific for hundreds of years. The first palefaces to explore this paradise sailed their magnificent square riggers into the bay, dropped anchor and made their way, armed, to meet the naked natives on the beach.

After working out some language problems, one of the first questions the white guys asked the black guys was, “What place did you come from? Another island? By boat?”

The natives could not comprehend the question. “We’ve always lived here. Our fathers and grandfathers lived here. There is no other place. And we have no need of boats. We’re not going anywhere.”

About the time we moved to Peachtree City in 1971, the golf community was building up along Golf View Drive, and selling quickly, and I remember bragging to a friend that from Flat Creek Club you’d never guess there were a hundred or so houses down there, because the builders were careful not to take down one sapling unnecessarily.

Friends of ours bought a hilltop lot there precisely because at the back property line grew a thick grove of trees, a mix of species, where our friend used to like to sit in the shade falling on her lawn and watch the birds raise their families.

One day a new neighbor bought the lot behind our friends’ and hardly had the welcoming handshakes been exchanged when the chain saws began to scream. “I’ve always wanted room for a tennis court,” shouted the new owner, and in moments he had what he wanted. The trees were gone and the concrete poured.

I never actually saw anyone play tennis up there, but of course it was pretty hot now that the shade was gone. Must have been disappointing to the New Neighbor too. He moved away not long afterward.

That was about 30 years ago, and no one ever did play tennis up there, not that I noticed. The trees didn’t come back, of course, although for a while grass grew up between the concrete slabs. Not many birds returned either.

Well, Mr. New Neighbor owned the property, and he could do anything he wanted with it, right? Those weren’t my trees and they weren’t my friends’ trees, so I guess we didn’t have much say.

We’ve seen the same thing along rivers where we’ve taken the boat, whole steep embankments of red clay in which rain had chopped channels clear to the base, leaving behind silt and instability.

They can do “landscape” planting, after all, maybe put in a nice concrete walkway, and hope the grass takes hold before the mud sweeps it all away.

And if the neighbors, who choose to leave their piece of river, trees, and earth a little more natural, don’t like it, that’s too bad, but it is the new guy’s privilege. He bought river rights, and he owns all the way to the waterline below.

It’s the American way, right?

By now, I’m sure you know that I tend to believe that “ownership” — whether of shade trees or the products of a paper mill or the location of a beautiful building, say a church — while we may not have a piece of paper that says so, belongs to us all. Or to no one.

The shade, bird life, and perhaps the fruit of the trees; the odor of an upwind factory, perfectly within its rights to emit a harmless smell; a church on a prominent corner giving way for a drugstore — all appropriate and legal except for maybe a “T” or two that need crossing.

When you buy into an established neighborhood, it seems reasonable to me to expect the environs to remain essentially as you see them.

If you buy next door to a shady grove or an elegant church, there’s no guarantee, but it seems logical to expect your surroundings to stay pretty much as you found them.

We’ll vote on it. I doubt I’ll get the results I want. And I’ll be ashamed that the church I have helped nurture, and have been nurtured by, for more than 30 years, will display its respect for my community in the way it will.

We don’t own the grove of trees, but its shade belongs to us all.