Whether the “City of Ships” or “Maine’s Cool Little City” wins out as Bath’s main moniker, its identity is also distinguished by being a “Tree City USA” noted for its dedication to maintaining the diverse legacy of its unique urban forest inventory. In Bath, Arbor Day is observed everyday. Trees are part and parcel of Bath’s character, its “quality of place.” Its forestry management program is overseen by a professional arborist, an advisory board and citizen volunteerism. Bath is a big time official tree-hugger.

Mother Nature could care less. Many of Bath’s oldest leafed and needled residents fell completely helpless to the high winds and driving rain of last week’s latest and greatest Maine megastorm. Throughout the night sleep disrupting outbursts of disquieting sound gave alarm that nearby trees were being hit hard. Looking out at daybreak the feared devastation was shockingly confirmed. Several enormous specimens lay about, miraculously having missed contact with neighboring houses, fences, cars, boats, or other trees. It was as if the trees tried to mitigate the potential damage of their own demise. Utility lines all appeared A-OK, yet as the sky lightened most residences remained unlit as the drone of generators here and there revved up.

Where I live electric service somehow held out until the storm had almost passed. Rising early, I’d just kicked the furnace on, giving thanks for that good fortune, when the power went out and remained so for three days.

It was the immense alteration of familiar view sheds that eventually led the eye downward to the destruction wrought by nature upon nature. Huge trees, having always been there, and there just yesterday, were now laying on the ground, their immense trunks amazingly snapped in two or uprooted altogether. Tall trees somehow never look as big upright as they do when brought low and viewed horizontal. Everywhere, lesser branches were strewn upon a surreal carpet of leaves littering the landscape with equal amounts still green as those having turned color.

My own trees withstood all with only minor injuries, chosen and planted after the horrific ice storm of 1998 because of their recommended ruggedness though some nevertheless fell prey to subsequent lesser meteorological attacks. Unprecedented snow on tree limbs still fully leafed out was the last devastatingly freakish assault of Mother Nature upon her own arboreal children.

Collateral to such “cyclical” weather events, yearly defoliation by Browntail and Winter Moth caterpillars, combined with ongoing minor drought impacts, takes its toll on both long-standing forestry and even the seemingly most robust trees one has planted and cared for. One does what one can and hopes for the best, trying to find the proverbial glass half full and convincing oneself that some things we simply have no control over.

We have no control over weather events. We can barely predict them with any accuracy. That was true back in the day and is all the more likely going forward. However, we could try far, far harder to control our now well documented science verified assault on nature, so its assault on us isn’t so eye-for-an-eye vindictive. Deciduous trees still green in November ain’t natural. September weather long past September is no “Indian Summer,” but a very odd weather mutation that shouldn’t be so cluelessly high-fived.

It’s hard to determine whether the weather that causes days-on-end electric outages, property damage and income loss is a “normal” event of nature or the result of man’s unrelenting environmental degradation, especially for those especially enamored with all things reliant on ever increasing energy consumption, consumption that’s always eco-unfriendly at some level. Meanwhile, we’re all so addicted to the latest technology yet we readily ignore the irony that above ground power conveyance is a crude 19th century underpinning with which we complacently subjugate ourselves.

Though we refuse to seriously control our technological impact on nature, we could far better control the delivery of our endless energy consumption.

Central Maine Power likes to exclaim: “Flip a switch and we’re there!” The unspoken addendum is: “Unless we’re not!” What never gets old during power outages is the habitual reflex of flipping those switches over and over again to no avail or an improving learning curve.

Funny how gas and water lines never fall prey to the same disastrous disruptions with which CMP is perennially plagued. Oh yea, they aren’t above-ground! Somehow other utilities manage to afford their underground overhead and still reap sufficient profit. The argument of electric utilities not being capable of providing similarly affordable reliability, or it not being physically doable, is simply a dog that won’t hunt. If CMP wasn’t given a special pass by Maine’s PUC, and had to pay for storm damaged line repair themselves, they’d have all lines underground yesterday.

Instead, CMP will continue seeing the intrinsic value of Maine’s forestry, urban or rural, as the mortal enemy of their antiquated conveyance technology requiring constant ratepayer-off-setted pruning that callously disregards all consideration of its aesthetic disfigurement or long-term tree health.

CMP’s refusal to provide truly reliable service, especially in densely populated areas, especially with increasing climate change challenges, should no longer be tolerated or rewarded.

Gary Anderson lives in Bath.