A spring storm is rolling in with dark clouds and high winds, but Bill Rutherford isn't one to take cover.

If it were his day off, he would probably be hanging out at the top of a sturdy tree somewhere, enjoying the unique music of the rustling leaves and swaying with the branches. But it's not his day off, so Rutherford has to be content to enjoy the show from below like a weatherman who refuses to seek shelter in the middle of a hurricane.

"On a windy day, don't go inside — come out and listen," he says, tilting his neck back to look up at a 30-foot Austrian pine rocking in the wind outside the Salt Lake City-County Building.

"Each tree has its own language, but too many people don't stop to hear it. We pretty much take trees for granted, don't we? But without them, our lives would be completely different."

As Salt Lake City's urban forester, Rutherford can't imagine life without chestnut and cherry trees, walnuts and willows. Ever since he climbed his first maple as a boy growing up outside Detroit, he's found serenity and a better view 40 feet above ground.

In honor of National Arbor Day on Friday, Rutherford recently joined me for a Free Lunch chat while strolling the grounds of Washington Square, home to some of the city's most stately and unique trees. It wasn't difficult to spot him in the park — he was the only person looking up while everybody else was looking down, scurrying to escape the wind and the dust.

Tall and thin like a lodgepole pine, Rutherford moves with ease beneath the budding canopy at Washington Square, stopping every minute or so to point out some of the park's most unusual specimens.

"I don't have any favorites — all trees are beneficial," he says, pausing in front of an American elm, one of the tallest (70 feet) and oldest (about 95 years) in the park. "But this tree is probably one of our most valuable. When we did an appraisal of the trees, this elm was found to be worth about $33,000."

To Rutherford, though, all trees are priceless. Without them, our air would be more polluted and our cities would be masses of baked concrete, he says. Imagine life without a cottonwood or dogwood tree to relax under on a hot summer day, or a world without apples, oranges and plums.

"I love them all," he says, "which is why I will never develop a list of trees that should be prohibited in the city, even though I've been asked."

He points to a sequoia, a redwood more commonly found along the California coast. "People thought we were nuts to plant a sequoia in Salt Lake City – they said there was no was no way it would make it here," says Rutherford. "But look at it. It's thriving."