Location: Brown University Campus

The tree outside my dorm room window is slowly losing its leaves. The winter nakedness proceeds from the top down. Whereas a month ago I had perpetual auburn fireworks erupting every time I picked my head up from a book, now the crown of the tree is bare. Nearer to the base, the orange-red, hand-shaped leaves hold on determinedly, and I silently root for them to hold off winter. On windy days it rains foliage, and each week the barrenness proceeds further down the tree. A similar tree across the courtyard is almost completely bare already. Maybe it’s a different species, or maybe it is a function of its exposure to the wind, and the position of the building that surround.
I’ve been trying to identify my tree but it is more difficult than it seems. Today I took my Audubon Society Field Guide to New England and sat outside in the autumn drizzle, bending down and picking up singular leaves, trying to match them to the pictures in the book. The leaves are star-shaped, with five points, and smooth edges. The veins branch out from the central stem and follow each point to its apex. The trees bark is furrowed and rough, with a dull-silverish sheen in some places. Maybe that is just the rain. I could identify no nuts or pods that might give away my enigmatic neighbor. A sugar maple perhaps? A London planetree? Maybe I need a more extensive guide, or maybe I just more practice. This doesn’t bother me because I am drawn to this tree.
So I sit longer. I have noticed that the rain sends students indoors, which in turn brings the other denizens of Providence out. Squirrels jerk up the trunk of the tree, like furry little robots, heads turning with staccato rapidity. I notice that they never venture too far from the trunk, open asphalt being prime potential predator territory. The house sparrows, passer domesticus, that hop around the base also stay close to their only means of protection, of cover from larger, more threatening birds like the peregrine falcon I saw swoop down over Pembroke green the other day. All the animals I see in fact, seem to orbit around the tree.
This appears strange to me until I consider the fact that humans demonstrate similar behavior. I mean why have we taken it upon ourselves to plant so many trees on campus? What purpose do the great white oaks (quercus alba) on the Main Green serve? As superficial accessories to the looming brick walls? As quaint picture frames for an expensive education? I need to believe it is more than this. Why are humans attracted to trees, even when we derive no tangible benefit like protection or sustenance from them? Maybe we still carry within our DNA the evolutionary memories of when trees really were all this to us, that is we have an animal propensity for them. Or maybe we appreciate them for more abstract, human reason like aesthetics and serenity. Or maybe we don’t appreciate them at all, consciously at least. If you watch the students walking down the shady paths on campus, you will see that very few of them ever look up. This group includes me usually, mornings like this being the exception. Now sitting under the tree outside my window I think about the purpose of planting trees in an urban environment. We don’t notice them when they’re there perhaps, but we’d certainly notice them if they were gone, wouldn’t we? Maybe they don’t literally keep us secure like they do the squirrels, but as I sit here I feel an abstract sense of refuge. Spiritual protection perhaps. Another leaf falls from the tree.