They Told Her to Chop Down a 110-Year-Old Tree – She Had a Better Idea… (VIDEO)

Many nature lovers have a tree that they love to visit and appreciate for its beauty … and for Sara Sanders, a resident of Everett, Washington, this tree happened to be in her yard! A beautiful old cedar tree had been situated beside her house ever since she moved in, and even influenced her to purchase the house in the first place. However, when the tree began to sicken and die, she was left with the difficult decision of having to remove it.

“The tree meant a lot to me,” she explained. “One of the reasons I bought the house seventeen years ago was because of the tree. I wanted to be able to commemorate it in some way because it was a wonderful tree.” She decided to do just that – with the assistance of local woodcutter, Larry Carter – by turning the tree into a small community library! The library consists of a small cabinet set into the trunk of the tree, where people are free to take books and leave them there as they please. It has become a popular resource in the community, with Sanders even saying that people started leaving books in the cabinet before she had gotten around to doing so herself. To learn more about the story behind the library, watch the video above.

Carter brought the leftover wood from the tree to the Evergreen State Fair, where it was used by artists to make a series of beautiful sculptures! About fifty individual sculptures have been created from that single tree.

To learn more about just how vital trees are – as the lungs of our planet – and how important it is for us to save them, read our article, The Most Amazing Trees You’ll Ever See and How You Can Protect Them.