What is so cool about trees?

Yesterday, my entamology class (entamology is the study of bugs) walked around campus looking at trees that have been attacked by insects. One particular tree that our class was looking at was a subalpine fir (one of my favorites) that was located in the big round planter with the steps all the way around it between the library and the TLC. This is sort of the centerpiece of this part of campus and is elevated and seen by everyone. While our professor was talking about the Balsam Wooley Adelgid, the bug that is attacking the trees in this planter, I couldn't help but think how the people in our class must look, standing in this elevated peice of landscaping crawling through the trees and feeling the branches and looking for bugs. To the normal student walking to class or to the library at this time of the day, our class probably looked pretty weird. "What in the world are they doing?" probably came to mind to several people on campus during this time, "What is so cool about trees?"
I am a forestry major and I think that trees are one of the coolest things in the world. When I am walking around with my friends and I see a neat looking tree, I run up to it and feel its bark and leaves and try to decipher what kind of tree it is. My friends just role their eyes and laugh at me. This also happens with cars. I am really into cars also and if I see a different or rare or new car in a parking lot I go up to it and peer inside to see what the interior looks like and sometimes I even crawl under it to look at the undercarriage; the driveline, the transmission, the suspension setup. It is all very facinating to me. Allthough it is very embarrassing to the friends that I am with at the time.
Everybody though has their own interests that they are facinated with or are close to the point of obbsession with. There are many things that other people care deeply about and talk about that I don't care at all about and wonder "What's so cool about that?" For instance, my roomate is really into sports, and he'll tell me who won this game or how many goals or touchdowns or points this particular sports star made last weekend, and I just role my eyes and say "That's great, I don't care." I'll be looking at a car magazine and start telling him about some new or old car that has some nifty feature and he'll say "I don't get it, what's so great about cars."
Everything that other people like that we don't really care about seems weird to us. We can't possibly fathom why someone would be so interested in this thing that if it went away forever it would not make much of a difference to us, however it would totally change the lives of the people that care about it. I think this is very interesting, how we are all people but have such different interests and tastes. But I think that this is what makes society function properly, because after all, somebody has to care about the trees.