After 30 years in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, and 30 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it can be sweaty for months at a time, we have spent 15 years in Oak Harbor and on Whidbey Island with not one day hot enough to cause a sitter to sweat. So why are there so many towering pine trees throughout Oak Harbor?

During the last windstorm a 50-to-70-foot high pine tree fell across our street where it fortunately missed the neighbors and their neighbors’ house. Folks all around us have one to five similar trees each that could do severe damage in any hard wind.

Is it a cultural memory of past trees that causes us to keep these monsters? Perhaps a fear of global warming that raises temperature by a degree per year — if that.

Once a large tree crushes your house, it will never be the same again. You would feel even worse if your tree injured a neighbor. Wake up! Cut down high trees and plant smaller decorative trees.

John Q. Adams

Oak Harbor