Congregants Gather To Bid Farewell To A Beloved Tree At Bridgehampton Church, Due To Be Felled

It’s doubtful anyone cruising by on Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton early Friday evening even noticed the small group of people gathered around an old tree. The branches on a big limb that had snapped off about three weeks ago still littered the lawn, their leaves already brown.

The group had gathered next to Faro a La Naciones Christian Church, which occupies the former Bridgehampton United Methodist Church site at the corner of Montauk Highway and Church Lane, to offer a service of gratitude and farewell for the tree, which has been weakened by disease and rot and will be removed in the coming days.

The Reverend Joanne Utley, the pastor of the Hamptons United Methodist Church, which was created when the Bridgehampton and Southampton Methodist congregations merged several years ago, and still owns the property, led the brief service.

She estimated that the tree, a European weeping beech, had stood at the site between the former Bridgehampton United Methodist Church and its parsonage for at least 150 years. It was probably planted as a stately street tree right around the time the parsonage was built in 1870, she said.

Utley said her research on European weeping beeches revealed that the trees were often planted as “statement” specimens in formal gardens and similar settings.

The tree, with willow-like branches that hang down to the ground, screened the parsonage from the highway a few yards away, she said, adding, “It seemed appropriate to do something to mark its passing.”

Utley read a poem, “When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver, and said that during its long life, the tree had “seen many church members come and go, first in buggies with horses and now with electric cars.”

“Many a pastor has sat on the front porch and enjoyed its beauty,” she continued. “Many a PK — that’s “pastor’s kid” — has climbed into limbs and played in the secret garden that lies beneath its canopy of branches.”

She spoke of how the tree’s beauty filled “the beholder with a feeling almost akin to reverence,” and offered a prayer of thanks for its many attributes, ending with, “For the ways you have made us stop in our tracks and marvel at the mighty works of the Creator’s hands.”

Utley concluded with a reading adapted from the poem “Prayer for Perishing Trees” by Frederick Brussat, while the crows that have been nesting in its upper branches made a racket.