Trees do us more good than you may think

A Florida live oak at Eden Gardens State Park in Point Washington. Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.

A wooded lot on Racetrack Road was recently cleared. A business was gained, and a couple of hundred trees were lost.

But that’s not the whole story.

A bit of smog control disappeared into the woodpile. Trees help filter pollutants from the air, which is why big cities across America are planting more and more trees within their limits. We don’t have smoke-belching factories here in Northwest Florida, but we do have cars, and cars emit pollution. Trees help clean that up.

Save a little slice of Fort Walton Beach.

The neighborhood will be a little hotter, too. Trees help regulate those torrid afternoon high temperatures by giving off water vapor through their leaves when exposed to that harsh Florida sun. And they provide shade. Now, the sun will beat down on buildings and bare ground.

Next time it rains, more soil will wash into storm drains, not just from the cleared lot but also from surrounding property. Trees help slow the velocity of raindrops, which means they cause less damage when they strike the ground. Tree roots help keep the soil in place, which slows the velocity of the water draining from the land. Now it’s more likely that after the flash showers we have around here, a torrent, not a trickle, will rush across the land.

The neighborhood will be a little noisier, too. A thick border of trees provides terrific sound insulation from the lovely clamor of tires screeching and horns honking along Racetrack Road. Now, the tumult will reach back to the businesses and families that sit on the back streets.

Northwest Florida’s natural beauty is only a pale shadow of what it once was.

The wind will blow stronger through that stretch of land. Without trees to moderate the movement of air, any of the soil left over from the gullywashers will be gone with the wind. Drivers doing the Beal Parkway Crawl past the Wal-Mart site last Saturday can tell you what that looks like: clouds of throat-parching dust sweeping across four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic.

And of course, a tiny oasis of life was bulldozed into history. No doubt birds and small animals inhabited that tract of woods.

And I imagine a kid or two used it to conduct imaginary explorations or Indiana Jones-style escapes into faraway lands. Every day, more places where kids are able to play and flex their minds are cut down, fenced off and built over.

I prefer change that benefits us all.

When those trees came down, a tiny percentage of carbon- and water-fixing was lost, and a tiny percentage of greenhouse gases was introduced to the atmosphere. Whether man or nature is to blame for global warming, trees help keep it in check, and this batch of trees is now lost to the cause.

It was only a small tract of land, but as you can see, it was a lot more. It was a part of an amazing machine, one that we know needs to be looked after, but don’t seem to care about.

And while this plot of land by itself won’t make any difference in the way things go, when you put all the plots of land together, you see something very big, very important, and something that will make a huge difference.

That’s the story.

This column was published in the Wednesday, June 17, 1998 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .