I have a fondness for trees. They’re beautiful, stoic, generous. They provide scenery, nests, shade, rustling, colour, and metaphors.
Fall 2013
Everyday this week my (urban) neighbourhood has been abuzz with the sounds of chainsaws and a woodchipper. One block over they’ve been systematically dismantling a giant tree that towered over the area. It was a truly huge tree – at least 12 storeys – and it looked healthy and full, with a lush green canopy broadly covering numerous buildings, yards, and other trees. Perhaps it was a risk for a limb to crash down during strong winds or a heavy snowstorm, perhaps it had become diseased and was rotting from within, or perhaps some low-scruples entrepreneur simply oversold his cutting services. At first I thought they were just doing some pre-winter trimming but by the end of the week the whole thing was gone.
It’s sad. There stood this huge, strong, calm, vibrant, enduring presence and now there’s nothing but sky. Someone looking there now wouldn’t even know that something so mighty and beautiful once stood there for so long, giving life to so much else.
Late Summer 2014 – just before it disappeared forever
