~When All Of The Trees Are Gone~

"When all of the trees are gone, when the Birds fly no more, when the Animals are no longer, and when the Streams and the Fish that live there, disappear from the face of this Earth forever, how will Man eat his Money then?" I had read something like that once and the Lord and I both know I've butchered it pretty well, but you get the jist of it. I believe it was part of an Indian saying . I tried to find it on a Yahoo search and I got 14,000,000 hits just by putting in "when all the trees are gone".

A little over 500 years ago, when Columbus stumbled onto America, there was over 850,000,000 acres of natural woodland forests, today there is less than 1,000,000. We might not see it in our life times (so we tend to not care) but our children might and their children will definitely see a time when there is no more natural forrests other than State Parks, and they will have to pay to see them. We don't think of "Forests" much here in Oklahoma, we call em "Woods" but none the less, they are disappering. I took a drive here a while back to a few places where I grew up, not far from where I live now. My parent's place in the country where we lived for a while when I was a kid, My grandparent's place in Porum where I played as a kid. There's no trees, just houses and flat land. Back then you didn't have to worry as much and I could roam the woods all day long in the summer. Mostly people's private land but they didn't mind. I could fish or collect rocks, look for arrow heads, or even run around with my Red Ryder BB Gun or a bow and arrow and pretend to hunt rabbits or buffalo. It may have not been a forest but it was big to me. I have a friend with some land down south, and in the twenty some odd years I've known him, it's grown up quite a bit, I take my daughter there from time to time. It's full of whitetail deer, turkey, rabbits, squirrels, and anything else you can think of. There's oak trees, hickory, elm, cotton wood, dog wood, spruce, blackgum, hackberry, cedar, persimmon, and the most ubundant tree of all, the one with the big sharp thorns about three inches long, the Locust, there's even a few pecan trees, plus a bunch of other trees and bushes I can't name. People always say that they are going to get around and do something someday, for me it's planting a tree or two, I've planted a few in my day, but I want to plant a couple of apple trees out on my friend's land, he won't mind, and I don't care if anyone ever knows, something the deer and the birds can enjoy, I've sure enjoyed them. Does anyone know when National Arbor day is ? It's the last Friday in April every year, it falls on the 28th this year. So go to www.aborday.org and learn about some trees and the history of Arbor Day, get jazzed up and go out and plant a tree or two. Someday I might tell you about my grandpa's trees. Until then, Good day.