We lost a lovely white birch tree today in front of the Kennebec Journal, to improve access to the new Target and Lowe's shopping center going in behind our building.

As a reader said in our article about the retail complex yesterday: "I guess this is progress."

It is, we know, and Augusta needs it. But still, we feel an odd sense of loss today. Here's an appropriate poem by Robert Frost:

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

--Robert Frost

In today's Kennebec Journal, you can read a story about how Augusta is trying to turn up the voltage on its July Fourth events. Maine's capital city is trying hard to use the riverfront areas to its advantage, and this is the latest example. You can read the story here: Officials planning a capital Fourth of July

Will it work? I don't know but it's worth the try. Lewiston-Auburn and Bangor are basically trying to do the same thing. Some folks in Waterville are talking similarly, and hoping the Hathaway mill project is a big step in that direction.

On the other hand, Augusta is an oddly segmented city. It has jewels — the Capitol, U-Maine Augusta, the underdeveloped riverfront areas, and now two major, new shopping areas.

But unlike Portland, Portsmouth, N.H. and even Boston, it's hard to get from here to there. You can't walk from the riverfront area to the Capitol complex without risking your life crossing Western Avenue. UMA is a gem that glitters more with each year but it's a geographic island. You have to get in your car to get there and get in your car to go from there to any of the places I list above.

We recently did a series about Augusta's promise and challenges. It was called, "Augusta Comes of Age." You can read it here: The Future of Augusta

You know what Augusta needs most? A dining district. There are good restaurants scattered around, such as the Senator and others. But there's no critical mass.

We all will welcome the Slates' reopening and that's great for Hallowell. Augusta should have three or four Slates, and preferably you and I could walk to all of them from the same parking garage.

When that day comes, the appetizers are on me.