Another equinox approaches

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

By Max McCoy

There’s a cottonwood tree in a city park at Council Grove that is believed to have sprouted in 1803.

The tree is massive, as one might expect, with a trunk that spreads from the ground like the pillar of an ancient cathedral. Looking up into its massive branches is like peering into an arboreal apse, and it inspires a feeling of reverence.

At least it does in me.

The cottonwood was once part of a mile-wide grove of trees that sheltered travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, according to a bent aluminum sign near its base. This massive eastern cottonwood may be the oldest survivor of a grove of trees that thrived before there was a Council Grove or even the Santa Fe Trail.

It’s not the oldest cottonwood in America, because that distinction likely belongs to a 385-year-old plains cottonwood in the badlands of North Dakota. It’s not the most historic tree in Kansas, or even Council Grove. But it is certainly among the most beautiful.

Recently I made a pilgrimage to the ancient tree at Council Grove to escape, if only temporarily, from the crush of current events and to feel beneath my hand the furrowed bark of the natural world.

Two years ago this month, I visited an old stone bridge at a city park in Emporia and reflected on how the coming autumnal equinox seemed to mirror our national division.

“We are at a political equinox in the course of our democracy,” I wrote, “a time when forces are nearly equally aligned. We are not at balance, but in chaotic turmoil, and the days that follow (the presidential election on) Nov. 5 must surely become shorter for one side than the other.”

Now we approach another fall equinox.

In its latest effort to overhaul federal homelessness funding, the Trump administration is proposing to provide more money to localities that prioritize treatment-first policies such as sober living, more cooperation with law enforcement and more temporary and transitional housing.

It’s a reversal from a decade-long federal approach known as Housing First that sought to permanently house people experiencing homelessness without requiring sobriety or participation in treatment programs as a condition.

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