Friday, April 06, 2007

The trees are gone!

Admittedly, it has been a lengthy hiatus from the last post, however, this is owing to the fact that the Three Trees can no longer be photographed, and have been cut down so that a very large and beautiful new house can have more light. When we first moved to this neck of the woods, I mentioned to my wife that those three trees are not there. I can’t see them. She told me not to think negatively, and I insisted that the three trees would not last another five years.

The trees are gone!

It took two and a half years for that truth to manifest, and with great sadness, I watched a crew burning the stumps and roots. The cutting of the trees took place while we were working in the office and on some construction projects around the property, and I felt a sickness in my stomach. My wife could hear some undefinable screaming.

The trees are gone!

One of the trees was an elder Sitka Spruce of ~600 years, the other two were redwoods and definitely over a few centuries in age. These trees survived the extensive logging of this area that saw the old-growth coastal redwood population dwindled to approximately 5% of its original habitat, which already was 5% of its area occupied before the last ice age. That these trees would be cut down so that a property owner could ostensibly pay for his property and perhaps home, after avoiding being toppled when mammoth redwoods were sawed at the base and harvested en masse, represents a real travesty.

The trees are gone!

More of the wild being tamed equals more sunlight for a property owner who moved to the area for the beauty of the woods and trees, only to cut them down for profit and their nasty habit of blocking the sun… In an area where trees abound, and a county in which ~75% of the land is either government owned or protected, and in which coastal redwoods thrive if left undisturbed, it is amazing how many move here for the beauty only to cut the trees down.

The trees are gone!

Part of the reason this blog halted is that the trees were cut down and so it seemed irrelevant and pointless to continue, then, there was the increased traffic noise that allows us to now hear the highway at any time when outside (which noises the trees were blocking), another reason was owing to some family deaths, but, now I see that this may well be the last entry. Call it a tribute to the three trees whose untimely “harvesting” and status as “residuals” only offered them up on a platter of opportunity, thereby opening up the entire neighborhood to highway noise and the lovely sounds of beef cows grazing.

The trees are gone!

Life's Force,

Scott Michael Potter

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home