BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) - To walk with Warren Spinner through a city park is to time-travel.
On Friday, his last day of work as Burlington’s City Arborist, he reflected on how his 38-year career has intersected with mayoral regimes, changes to climate and the lives of thousands of trees on his watch.
During an hour-long stroll, Spinner remembered a fierce windstorm in the summer of 1983 that toppled a 250-year-old white oak.
He invoked the Monroe Street neighborhood in the 1980s where volunteers, including then-Mayor Bernie Sanders, replaced the stumps of diseased American elms with honey locust saplings.
Spinner rooted for the fragrant silver lindens in Waterfront Park he helped plant in 1991, and for the grove of five surviving American chestnuts in Ethan Allen Park.
Pointing at the greenery along the walk, Spinner speculated when a given tree might age out, and what species might replace it.
He pointed out the hops-like seed pod of an American hornbeam; the benign bacterial ooze (“slime flux”) on a lone elm; a shift from sandy topsoil to outcrops of bedrock in the New North End.
The built environment, too, commands Spinner’s attention.
“The city is involved with a lot of development right now,” he said. “Burlington is changing for the better.”
He explained why: “The administration of Miro Weinberger, the planners, the builders have included me in discussions on infrastructure, especially around stormwater. It’s been awesome. There’s no longer any question how important urban forestry is to this. They get it.”
Weinberger, for his part, said Friday that Spinner “has left a lasting mark” on public spaces in the city - a legacy that will make the search for his successor all the more challenging.
Spinner was just beginning his career when Bernie Sanders was elected mayor.
When Sanders campaigned through neighborhoods devoid of tree cover, it made a strong impression, and spurred a well-organized reforestation effort, Spinner said.
“He wanted to plant a thousand trees a year for 10 years,” he continued. “Can you imagine hearing that for the first time? I was probably 28, 29 years old at the time, and I’m going ’Holy Cow!’”
Over the course of six hours in late April 1983, volunteers planted about 430 trees - all the digging done by hand, Spinner said.
Sanders remembers those years, too.
In an email he wrote:
“I fondly recall joining Warren and residents of the Old North End to plant trees on North Street. In his decades of committed service, Warren’s outstanding work earned Burlington national recognition for the city’s urban forestry efforts, and helped make Burlington one of the most livable cities in the United States.”
Subsequent mayoral administrations also championed Spinner’s efforts.
But grassroots organizing continued to play a key role, he said.
In 1996, University of Vermont entomologist Margaret Skinner, launched the group Branch Out Burlington. Within a year or two, she had forged an alliance with Skinner.
Although the arborist initially resisted the notion of a citizen-run tree nursery to supply the city with trees, Spinner finally came around, a capitulation that he still kids about with Skinner.
“We’ve developed a meeting of the minds over the years, a synergy,” Skinner said.
Spinner’s talent for collaboration has grown enormously since then, she added: “He’ll talk with Joe Blow who knows absolutely nothing about trees, or with a professor, or a specialist and everyone in between. And he enjoys it. He’s able to embrace their love of trees, along with his own.
“It’s so clear that he enjoys sharing that passion with anybody and everybody,” she added.
Michael Snyder, Vermont Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation, formerly the Chittenden County Forester, sang Spinners’ praises in a recent phone interview.
“He was a great role model, and he was just great to work with,” Synder said.
“He empowered people, he was good at teaching; making forestry approachable. He wasn’t preachy. He may have been preaching trees and the importance of street trees, but he never sounded like he was preaching.
“I just thought: ’This guy’s got some magic going on here, and I want some of that.’ Sure I learned technical things from him, but maybe more importantly I learned from his professionalism, his demeanor, his gregarious nature that was infectious and empowering.
“Let’s face it: Burlington is a beautiful city, and what a great legacy he’s left there,” Snyder said. “But I hope people can understand that his great work, over a long period of time there, is significant. But it goes well beyond Burlington. Many of us, throughout Vermont and the region have learned from him.”
Spinner, meanwhile, has a practical suggestion for the rest of us: Look at trees, admire trees; care for trees.
“It’s not just in the public rights of way,” he said. “The urban forest is in your backyard, as well as your city parks - it’s everywhere.”
___
Online: https://bfpne.ws/2g024K6
___
Information from: The Burlington Free Press, www.burlingtonfreepress.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.