A couple weeks into the summer, I had to
unexpectedly take off for two weeks. I was a bit
nervous to leave Cesar with the Forestry crew.
While safe, professional, and skilled, some of these
salty veterans have developed a bit of a tough
shell that took me a few years to really crack.
I needn't have worried. I returned to see the
crew behaving like Cesar's old friends. They
included him, kept him safe, shared their stories,
and cared about his success. By teaching him,
they seemed to reconnect to the fun of learning
about trees. His presence had boosted morale
unlike anything I've seen in the department.
We hosted a tree planting event in the first couple
weeks of the internship program. During these vol-
unteer events, forestry crew members help the tree
planters and use any needed power tools. On this
day we had Cesar and Alec, one of our veteran staff.
Alec can be all business—but has a wealth of expe-
rience, and he is the first person I'd call if I'm in a
bind at 2 a.m. Cesar and Alec became best buddies
through working events like the tree planting, and
this friendship appears to have helped inspire Alec
to pursue his ISA Certified Arborist certification.
We spent the final week of the summer working on
transferring Cesar's existing skills of rock climbing,
volunteering at the homeless pantry, and playing
video games into his new practical resume skill set of
climbing trees, leading volunteer planting events, and
solving the problems of growing trees in the urban
space. Through this exercise he could begin to see the
connection between his steps taken over the summer
and the future he could build for himself in the
world, whether in urban forestry, or something else.
Postscript: The journey continues! Cesar enrolled in
an internship class in his senior year of high school
and has returned to work with the Urban Forestry
team each Thursday after lunch for the school year—
and for one Saturday a month during planting season.
Together we plan to design planting locations in key
neighborhoods, work on a large park planting instal-
lation, and definitely climb some more trees.
24 CityTREES
"Cesar takes a moment to consider how this young
trident maple (Acer buergerianum) could interact with
its urban surroundings far into the future." —Ian K.
