In a Nutshell, Not

This past week, my wife Jen and I had the pleasure of taking a shift manning the display of the Pennsylvania Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation http://www.patacf.org/ that was part of Penn State's Ag Progress Days held annually in central Pennsylvania. The story of the American Chestnut tree is interesting, sad, and yet filled with hope depending on your perspective. At one time American Chestnuts accounted for 1 in 5 of all the trees in Pennsylvania. The legend was that a squirrel could travel from New Jersey to Ohio without ever leaving a Chestnut tree. The American Chestnut was an enormous tree, often exceeding six feet in diameter (the record was a monster fifteen feet across). Affected by a fungal blight causing organism imported with Chinese Chestnut trees in the 1800's, The mighty American Chestnut was gone by the early 1900's. The American Chestnut Tree Foundation is dedicated to breeding a blight resistant tree that can be introduced back into the great forests that it one populated with a range from Maine to Georgia. I am pleased that I am able to support this fine organization and would be delighted to speak more about the program. As you might suspect, there is much more to this story and the American Chestnut will be mentioned again here.

As with the Chestnut tree, there are any number of things in which we can invest time, money and energy. We all believe, at our core, that our lives should make some lasting effect that outlives us. It behooves us therefore to use our allotted time with discernment. The trees growing in our Chestnut orchard will, for the most part, die from the blight. But the few that do not will outlive me and hopefully provide the seed for the next generation of even more blight resistant trees. How we choose to treat the living things around us will have an effect that, properly done, will improve the world we all must leave. We leave this world to the generations that follow and we have the choice to leave it better than we found it. Taking care of the earth honors the One who provided it. His greatest work was people, you and me, we should be humbled by the responsibility with which we've been entrusted.