One man stood while awaiting the next step in serving jury duty.

He stood and walked to one of the large windows looking out of the Lowndes County Judicial Complex, providing a view north along Ashley Street from a few stories up.

If you’ve never looked out one of the windows on the Judicial Complex’s upper floors, the change in perspective is a revelation.

This particular courtroom provides a northern view stretching away from Downtown Valdosta.

On the other side of the complex, you can see the tops of downtown buildings, cars traveling along the James Beck Overpass. In the distance, toward Clyattville, smoke steams from the paper mill.

Though things look different from the southward view, the window reveals the sites one would expect to see just from a different height.

But what the waiting juror sees looking north is possibly more than one would expect, especially after all of the land clearing, the building of new structures and the devastation of Hurricane Idalia.

Valdosta is still mostly tree tops from this height.

Once the juror returns to his seat and I take a look that’s almost all that can be seen.

You can see Ashley Street meandering north. Some commercial signs are visible lining Ashley. People walk below and in the distance. Cars pass.

But almost everything else is lost to what looks like a vast forest of trees. I know there’s more to Valdosta than just one street and a few signs – there are the streets, houses, businesses, that I see every day. But from this height – other than a few outlines and suggestions – Valdosta lives up to its Tree City designation.

Driving Valdosta in recent months, looking at the places where Idalia toppled trees and even more trees fell due to a recent tornado and increased clearing of trees near houses and roads, one may think the city has been denuded of trees, especially in places where tall pines once loomed but the land is now bare.

Looking out the Judicial Complex window reveals a different story. A revelation covered with the dense green of trees.

But the true revelation is how my feelings about the trees have changed.

I’ve noticed this view from the courtroom before – the trees that seem to go on forever from this angle of Valdosta.

In the past, the view comforted. Despite all of the commercial and residential growth, all of the “progress,” Valdosta seemed like a cathedral under a canopy of trees.

After the storms of the past year, I view the trees differently. I do not blame the trees but I eye them with skepticism.

Entering another hurricane season, I don’t know how to feel about them.

I watch and wonder, like a juror waiting for a trial.

Dean Poling is a former editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and The Tifton Gazette.