YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - For more than a decade, Charles “Chip” Rognlie II worked as a state park ranger in North Dakota. Then he decided it was time for a new adventure, and with no plan but “drive west, find work,” he packed what he could into his pickup and camper and headed out.
He arrived in Grandview, where he worked as a laborer for four years, then moved to Yakima in 1990. He worked for the Keith & Keith Funeral Home for five years, then switched to full-time work with Shaw & Sons Funeral Home for three years.
The work suited him. Since Rognlie was a boy, he had two great loves: the outdoors and funeral work. Those interests stemmed from his childhood growing up in Churchs Ferry, N.D., population 7, where he often watched shows about park rangers on TV and helped his father dig or close graves at the local cemetery.
Rognlie heard about a job in the Yakima parks department in 2002 and decided, once again, to switch gears. His meandering path allowed him to combine his interests: He works full-time as a park maintenance specialist and as Yakima city arborist, while also working part-time in the funeral industry.
“You never know what’s going to happen, but I had my life planned out when I was 14, to work in parks and the funeral business,” he said, adding reflectively, “It’s funny when you look back, how everything falls into place.”
Yakima’s trees
Rognlie, whose love of trees is as notable as his knowledge of them, said his parks supervisor encouraged him to become a certified arborist through the International Society of Arboriculture.
That professional certification requires at least three years of full-time work experience in arboriculture as well as passing a rigorous online exam that asks more than 200 questions about horticulture, landscape architecture and forestry.
Rognlie said he studied for the test for a year and a half, memorizing the most minuscule details about soils, structural pruning, diseases and more. He received instant confirmation from his computer that he had passed the exam.
“I was so relieved,” he said, beaming a smile at the towering sycamore trees at Randall Park on a sunny day in April.
Rognlie said he had “always been interested in trees,” but he was unfamiliar with the specific trees in Yakima’s parks and downtown area. His interest in knowing the types of trees in specific city locations led to a massive inventory project that was only recently completed.
Rognlie scouted out every tree within the city - more than 6,500 in all - taking measurements, making notes of the species, age and condition of the tree, and taking pictures with a smartphone collector app. He sent the data to other park and city planning employees. The team incorporated GPS coordinates and the data into a real-time map of Yakima’s urban forest.
Rognlie said he spent so much time with the trees that he could likely draw a map of every tree in every park.
“The trees with the pink flowers along the canal pathway? Those are cherry trees,” Rognlie said, without hesitation, in response to a question. “The ones with the white flowers downtown? Those are Chanticleer pears.”
Public safety
Rognlie’s responsibilities as the city’s arborist entail much more than just walks in the parks. He points to ample spacing between trees near the Randall Park playground, noting that an important part of his job as the city arborist is to ensure the safety of those who visit the city’s parks.
Rognlie knows the trees will grow and spread out as they mature and will weaken as they age, and those are important considerations for planting, even though he may not see the entirety of that change in his lifetime.
“The work I do now with these young trees, I’ll never see because I’ll be gone,” he said. “As an arborist, you have to think about the future. You have to think 30 years, 100 years out from now.”
Rognlie is a member of Yakima’s Tree City USA board, created by the Yakima City Council in 2016 to bring a comprehensive arboreal plan for safety and beauty to the city’s landscape. Yakima was designated as a Tree City USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation in 2017.
The five-member local Tree City USA board is responsible for studying, developing, and administering an annual written plan for the care, preservation, planting, pruning and removal of trees in the city’s parks and right of ways. The public tree management program is part of the city’s urban forestry program, which focuses on balancing the needs of the community and the city’s wooded areas.
The ordinance includes guidelines for the proper spacing of trees from each other and from curbs and sidewalks and the types of trees that can be planted within city limits. It prohibits “tree topping,” the severe cutting back of limbs to stubs that disfigure the tree, a practice widely recognized by arborists as tree abuse and which Rognlie said is “signing a slow death warrant for the tree.”
The city has many old trees, some more than 100 years old, that are nearing the end of their life spans, Rognlie said. Old trees can pose public safety concerns, from collapse or falling branches.
Part of his job is making sure that trees that pose danger are removed, Rognlie said. He spotted one such tree recently along Lincoln Avenue and called his supervisor, who gave approval for the tree to be removed before it collapsed.
Occasionally, Rognlie will find himself advocating for a tree that poses no public safety risks to the public to be allowed to live, such as a tree in McGuinness Park that decided to grow horizontally.
“My boss told me, ’Take out that tree, it’s ugly,’” Rognlie recalled. “I told him there is no such thing as an ugly tree. It’s a tree that has character. It’s unique.”
The tree was allowed to remain.
Rognlie acknowledged that while trees can create what people see as inconveniences, their benefits - beauty, cleaner air, shade - far outweigh the drawbacks.
“Even though trees can be messy, they can fill up your gutter, the price is worth it,” Rognlie said. “You have to think about the long run. We can’t live without trees.”
Connection and comfort
Rognlie set up a booth this year at the 20th annual Arbor Festival at the Yakima Area Arboretum - the first time he had done so.
At his station, he had brochures about proper care for trees, copies of the city’s tree ordinance, and a list of acceptable trees to plant within city limits that he and other park staff put together for the public.
The list, which Rognlie said took park employees about a year to create, categorizes trees by the size they’ll attain when mature as well as special considerations for each species, including which ones are resistant to local troublemakers, such as the bronze birch borer or Dutch elm disease.
Acceptable trees include well-known varieties of oak, pine, and maples, as well as more exotic-sounding species such as the Cornelian cherry dogwood, the Japanese tree lilac, the Spring Snow Crabapple and the Tulip tree.
Rognlie said the list allows those wishing to plant trees on their property, or within city parks with city permission in memory of loved ones, to choose a species that will be meaningful for them and healthy for the tree, given the soil and surrounding conditions.
The list was on-site at a memorial tree planting at Gilbert Park on April 18. Linda and Bob Rockwell stood beside their friend Jim Bigelow and watched as Rognlie planted a Paperbark maple in honor of Bigelow’s wife, Maureen, who died in October 2018.
The couple met Bigelow years earlier at the park. Years before that meeting had taken place, Bob Rockwell’s father passed away and the nurses at the hospital had gathered money to plant a memorial tree in his honor. When Linda Rockwell’s mother died, she also chose to have a tree planted in the park to remember her. When Bigelow’s daughter, Catherine Gullickson, died five years ago, he continued the tradition and had a Redpointe maple planted in the park in her honor.
The Rockwells said they chose the Paperbark maple for a specific reason.
“His wife was unique and very beautiful,” Linda Rockwell said. “We wanted to pick something that was like her, and this was the most unique tree on the list. And this will last.”
Bigelow and the Rockwells said they often visit the park, especially with their grandchildren, to be near the trees and the memories of their loved ones.
“It provides a sense of comfort,” Bigelow said. “This is a special place to plant a memorial tree.”
Education and outreach
Mark Congleton, vice principal at St. Joseph Marquette Catholic School in downtown Yakima, recently contacted Rognlie about trees surrounding the school. Several had grown up to the asphalt and did not seem to be thriving. The school also was planning renovations to the campus that would necessitate the removal of other trees.
After consulting Rognlie, Congleton developed a plan to replace 11 of the bigger, older trees with 16 smaller, city-approved trees.
Congleton said he hopes the tree planting, in addition to improving the aesthetics of the school, can become an educational experience for the school’s sixth-grade students. The school’s science teacher is open to working information about trees into the science curriculum, Congleton said. Congleton also invited Rognlie to supervise the tree planting and follow up throughout the year to teach students about how to properly plant trees and care for them.
“It feels good to have a plan and to see where we can go from here,” Congleton said. “It’s good for the community, too. It shows the city is willing to help our youth too, because Chip is willing to come over and donate his time to help teach the youth.”
Rognlie said he was looking forward to sharing his knowledge of and passion for trees with the students. He also is hoping to increase other educational outreach around the city, including possibly establishing a mini-booth with brochures about trees at City Hall or the public works department office.
“I just have such a passion for trees,” Rognlie said. “I like to travel, and when I visit other cities, I can tell, by the state of their trees, the pride that the community has. The city’s trees help the community have that pride.”
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