What's in a Name?

There is something profoundly discordant about naming a stand of thousand year old trees after a human not even one-tenth as old. The Lady Bird Johnson Grove near Orick, California, is home to trees so ancient and so massive that if hollowed out, I have little doubt that a West Coast realty agent could successfully market them to a family of four at a price in the high six figures. Perhaps that is why it seems the height of hubris to name them after people. After all, most of us can only manage to stay on the planet for a scant eighty or so years. (Though Lady Bird, at 92, is doing her best to measure up to her namesakes.)

I expressed this sentiment to two of my friends while in the parking lot. “A” and “M” are one of those married couples with personalities that seem to diverge in almost every significant way, yet they fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. A is a sensitive, kind figure who makes her living in a creative field, and M is a relentlessly analytical type with little tolerance for the overly sentimental. But they possess pieces of each other – A’s creative abilities are coupled with a sharp left-brained intellect and an enviable sense of purpose and determination. M, on the other hand, has a warm heart he pretends to conceal behind statements of outrageous insensitivity. Most of these are merely devices to goad me into fits of spluttering indignation, which he finds endlessly amusing.

So predictably, when I explained my opinions on the name of the grove, A nodded sympathetically and vigorously. But M, in a bald attempt at inflaming my and his wife’s disgust, replied, “I think they should sell off the naming rights to the grove, and make a little extra money for the park. Maybe it could be the International Paper Grove.” After A snorted her contempt for such a notion, he said “Well, Trailhead, Lady Bird was instrumental in the founding of the grove.”

It appears that M and I have different interpretations of what it means to “found” a stand of ancient trees. I have no objection to Lady Bird herself – by all accounts, she is a lovely woman, and a true champion of conservation. I just can’t help but chuckle at the notion that one can found a grove of redwood trees by blocking others from chopping them down. But considering the breathtaking zeal with which timber companies have consumed California’s redwoods, I suppose I can look the other way if the powers-that-be want to name a few survivors after Lady Bird Johnson. Given the Orwellian times in which we live, things could be infinitely worse.

After all, there could be a Karl Rove Grove.