In the heart of Salt Lake City sits the Conference Center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This 1.4 million square foot edifice has served as its primary meeting center for the past quarter century.
Walk around it, and you’ll notice the vast pipe organ, sparkling chandeliers and — atop it all — a rooftop garden, a living landscape above the city.
But at the center of its massive auditorium sits a wooden pulpit engraved with shapes of beehives and enriched with an arboreal legacy from one of its major figures, Gordon B. Hinckley.
He served as the president of the Church during the building’s construction. A life-long tree lover, he planted many trees, including a black walnut tree in his Salt Lake City backyard.
36 years later, that black walnut died during the building of the Conference Center.
Seeing an opportunity, President Hinckley consulted with a woodworker. Ultimately, the wood from his family’s black walnut tree became the building’s pulpit.
In his first address in the conference center, Hinckley said, “Here I am speaking to you from the tree I grew in my backyard, where my children played and also grew.”
That story reminded me of the logs of a fallen cottonwood tree from City Creek that now line the beds of my own backyard vegetable garden.
Many of us have relationships with trees when they were living. Building something useful and beautiful out of them when they die gives those trees new life — and provides us with a connection to the past.
