On Utah State University’s Logan campus, a new project invited students to slow down, look up — and text a tree.
The “Talking Trees” project featured 13 trees — each with a name, personality, and phone number. Passersby could send a text and get a message back, turning an ordinary walk to class into a conversation with nature.
Miles Becker, an assistant professor and USU Extension’s urban forestry specialist, said the project aimed to strengthen people’s connection to the environment — and to each other.
“There's a large cottonwood at the bottom of Old Main Hill that has a personality of sort of a grumpy old man," he said, "and its name is Woodrow … Then there's Jin Ye, which is a ginkgo in the engineering quad, and 'Jin Ye' refers to its Chinese heritage.”
Behind the scenes, a team of 17 student volunteers acted as the trees’ voices.
"They are the ones that respond on behalf of the trees," Becker said. "So it's all live. It's unscripted and 100% fun.”
Two of the trees didn’t text — they just listened. These “wish trees” invited people to write their hopes on tags and hang them from the branches.
“There's quite a few that are about love and relationships, like wanting to find somebody to start a family with," Becker said. "There's some that are kind of silly — one was wishing that the person who wrote it could eat as many Flaming Hot Cheetos as they wanted without getting fat.”
The project ran from late Sept. through Oct., but it’s not over yet. The wishes will be displayed at the Merrill-Cazier Library in Feb., inviting visitors to wander through the words left hanging on the trees.
“So they'll be public and shared," Becker said. "Then hopefully some of them will come true.”
Becker is also on the Utah Community Forest Council, and added that he's heard other members expressing interest in replicating the project in their own cities, but that will have to wait until spring.
“The trees have gone to sleep for the winter," he said. "So they're gone silent, and they'll be back next year when we do it again.”