On the first 70-degree day of this o-so-slow spring, I began to think of buds, which turned my mind to trees. I pay attention to trees in all seasons, but leafing out draws my eye up into what seems a limeshot light. After a season of hard edges and clattering light, the slightly furred light of leaf-season’s beginning is a balm, a quieting.

Full leaf-out is still some days away in deeper May, but even now, as the buds swell and open, the trees stir, and I go to see them in the usual woodsy places. This year, I’m also intent on making some new tree-friends, and I’ve found that Brunswick has provided me with excellent help in my quest.

I don’t know how common it is for a town to have a Tree Committee, but we do. Beyond giving voice to their “upstanding” constituents, Brunswick’s Tree Committee has joined the town’s Parks and Recreation Department to set up a way for me to meet a variety of trees that live in town. You too can download the Committee’s two-page Self- Guided Walking Tour [to the] Trees of Downtown Brunswick through brunswickme.org. Page one features a map of downtown’s grid of streets, and at various locations on the map, you’ll find little tree graphics, numbered from 1 to 42. Each number corresponds to a particular tree, giving its approximate location, and, on a Tree List that surrounds the map and extends onto the second page, each numbered tree gets a short description. It’s also important to note, as Town Arborist Jay Astle told me, that the map is getting an update, which the group hopes to have ready some time this summer.

A clutch of these trees reside on or near the Mall, and so I begin my tour des arbres on its south end. It feels a trifle odd to be in town and yet concentrated on trees. Usually people, buildings and cars draw my eye, while I walk right by the stolid trees. Now, using my numbered chart, I begin to visit them instead, perhaps provoking idle curiosity from passersby: who is that man, walking erratically, consulting that paper and looking up into the trees?

As promised by the map, many of the trees can be located by looking on nearby pavement for a green, painted tree symbol. Once, when this map and that paint were new, the symbols had a number inside to correspond with that on the map. But the symbols are worn by traffic, water and winter, and so the treewalker must eyeball location on the ground and match it to the map, a sort of game that many map-people like.

That’s easily done with the finely-named, globe-shaped Silver Linden (#23) that resides just across from 206 Maine Street. Not far from there I visit the Maple siblings, Red and Sugar, both sizable trees whose sky-reach dizzies me a bit when I look up. Sugar also bear a small black nameplate, the Committee’s other method of pointing out their trees when there’s no asphalt to paint a symbol on near. (Note: word has it that the Committee is at work on an updated map.)

A little later, I’m out on Federal Street walking south to visit #37, a Norway Spruce visible from a downhill distance. The tree is set on the street-side fringe of some fine gardens, which are getting attention from three gardeners. I sidle up under the tree for a photo that looks up through the thick, curved branches. “Hey,” a voice startles me. “You got a permit for that?” Whoa, I think, do these trees also have guardians? And I say, “..er, no,” before catching the gardener’s broad smile. Then he shows me another great spruce toward the back of the garden. I’m on the inside now, I think, party to a tree-joke; so it is with those who love land and plants.

An hour or so later, I have 16 new friends. That’s quite a haul, even in the “friend”-heavy era of social media. But there…and there…and there…standing tall or, in some cases still small but aspiring, they are. And that leaves me still with a whole new set to visit on a later walk in town.

Coda: As is true with all life, trees come and go. On our current tree map the #28 points to the way absence can become remembrance — at this site, just north of First Parish Church, a fine Douglas Fir once stood. It’s full story would be another full column; for now I’ll simply say the map remembers #28, as do many people in town. Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident and chair of the town’s Conservation Commission. He writes for a variety of publications. His book, Critical Hours —

Search and Rescue in the White

Mountains, was published by University Press of New England on April 3rd, 2018 and is available at Gulf of Maine Books.

He may be reached at [email protected]