Haley Fryling was enjoying a cup of coffee Saturday morning, watching the world outside her window, when she suddenly saw a massive pine tree drifting across the sky.
"I was just sitting there having coffee when all of a sudden I'm like, 'Oh,' " said Fryling.
Four stately Aleppo pines on the lawn outside the University of Arizona's McKale Center — on the other side of North Campbell Avenue from Fryling's home — were moved to make room for two practice basketball and volleyball courts.
The daylong move of the pines, each about 65-feet tall and boxed in 13-foot-square containers, 5 1/2 feet deep, went off almost without a hitch, said Les Shipley of Civano Nursery, which was hired for the transplant.
"A water main broke — a water main that wasn't supposed to be there — right under tree Number 4, but we got it taken care of," Shipley said.
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One of the Aleppos held an impressively large hawk's nest with three eggs in it, guarded by what were presumed to be the parent hawks. One of the birds took a swipe at Civano worker Jeff Peterson as he was high up in a cherry picker attaching cables to Aleppo No. 2.
"They're back in their nest now, and they're really happy," Shipley said.
The transplanted pines, if they successfully take root in their new home, will provide instant shade for a new plaza between the practice courts and McKale Center arena.
"There is obviously no guarantee, but we feel it's important to the neighbors and the campus, and we have every reason to believe we'll be successful," said Rodney Mackey, project manager.
Susan Ingram was among the dozen or so spectators who watched from the McKale Center walkway as Aleppo No. 2 was lifted and carried to its new place on the lawn.
"I think it's wonderful they're trying to preserve them," she said.
The move, which required rental of a 250-ton crane, added $66,000 to the cost of the UA's latest expansion of athletic facilities — which also includes additions to the gymnastics practice facility and a new diving well and 10-meter platform for the swimming program. The overall budget for the project is $20 million, Mackey said.
The trees will give the project an instant maturity, he said. "It will make an enormous difference in the plaza in front of the practice facility," Mackey said. "We feel they're almost a cultural resource. They are a horticultural resource at the very least," he said.
The trees were valued at $100,000 by four arborists who were asked to examine them, said Elizabeth "Libby" Davison, director of the UA Campus Arboretum.
The entire campus is designated as an arboretum, which requires the UA to save trees and plants whenever possible.
Davison said the worth of the trees goes well beyond the arborists' estimate. They were originally grouped on the lawn in the 1970s as the UA expanded east and removed trees from the lawns of homes slated for demolition.
Shipley said he estimates the trees' ages at about 60 to 70 years. They should live at least that long in their new setting, he said.
The four Aleppos, weighing about 90,000 pounds each (including soil box), are the largest trees he's moved, said Shipley. He said his company moved a 40,000-pound hackberry on campus three years ago. "That damn thing never knew it got moved," he said. "It never dropped a leaf, and they're very fussy trees."
Shipley said moving the trees is worth it. "The campus is a registered arboretum. You just can't chop and mulch four specimen trees if there's nothing wrong with them," he said.
Aleppos are Mediterranean region trees that do well in Arizona, said Davison. Though not native, they are common in the area and were a popular landscape tree in the neighborhoods around the UA, she said. They tie the campus in with the skyline across Campbell where Aleppos dot the yards of the Sam Hughes Neighborhood.
There are other traditions to honor, said Davison. The McKale lawn is where the band practices and where pickup games of all sorts get played. The trees have shaded athletes and band members for four decades, she said.
"They're not native," said Doug Koppinger of Trees for Tucson, "but they sure are nice-sized and historic. They make a lot of shade, and these should certainly survive transplanting. It's worth the effort," he said.
Koppinger said he couldn't think of a larger tree being moved in Tucson.
The Davey Tree Expert Co., headquartered in Kent, Ohio, claims the world record for such things — a 75-foot-tall white oak in New York state that weighed more than 1 million pounds.
Its next largest move was a live oak in Florida that weighed 353 tons and had a root ball 42 feet in diameter. Movement of that tree was featured in National Geographic's April 2006 edition, said Elaine Mattern, spokeswoman for the company.
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The University of Arizona Mall was once a vast cactus garden, until it was redone in grass in the 1960s, says the UA Arboretum Web site.
"Although less conducive to sun-bathing than the grassy mall, the cactus garden was certainly more interesting," the site adds, offering historical photos as evidence.
Campuswide today, more than 500 individual tree species grow, including examples from arid and semi-arid climates around the world. Many of them are the largest specimens of their kind in Arizona, the arboretum says.
Want to check out these "great trees" and heritage trees? Go to the Web site — http://arboretum.arizona.edu/ — to print a list of trees and a map for a campus walk.
