A lean toward safety
The first time I felled a tree was in 1990. It was a large and tall sugar pine riddled with disease but still, somehow, majestic. But it had to go so, we, my then soon-tobe husband, stepfather and I, set about the business of felling it.
I remember to this day how the tree gave one huge shudder before an ear-splitting crack echoed through the mountains in the moment it toppled. It was breath taking. I was at once relieved and saddened. I was relieved it hadn’t fallen on any of us but instead laid down right where we intended. I was saddened by ending its life. It is something I will never forget.
When I looked at trees back in the day, I saw givers of welcome shade in the summer. I saw homes for birds and squirrels and bugs. It was a place for the cats to escape coyote and fox. I saw nature’s beauty.
In the past 32 years my view of trees has changed. Living in a place regularly plagued by wildfires will change your perspective on trees. Where I once saw shade, a home and safe place I now see nothing but fuel. Where I once saw beautiful forests or pastoral groves of oak and pine, I now see only the potential for deadly fire.
As William Blake wrote, “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.” While I’m certain he was speaking to the destruction of trees in favor of development of roads and cities, I now see trees as things that stand in the way of safety. This comes, I suspect, from having lived through more wildfires than I can count on one hand.
As they say “once burned, twice shy.”
As we fast enter another “bad” fire season (is there such a thing as a “good” fire season?) I have been preoccupied by my new perspective on trees. The trees that create a shade canopy on the road leading to my home make me nervous. The squirrel that scamper through them, the deer that mill beneath them and the hawk that perch in them barely register with me. All I can see is tinder.
The five trees that nestled around my home no longer lived as welcomed natural shade. Instead, they lived as food for the hungry maw of wildfire. They were too close to the house. Their limbs hung over our roof. They had to be sacrificed for the purpose of creating “defensible space.”
The decision to fell them was much like the decision to end a long relationship with an errant lover. Difficult but necessary for self-preservation. The threat they posed was greater than the joy of shade they brought on hot summer days.
Because of the proximity to the house and various phone and power wires, we hired a professional crew to cut the trees down. Or maybe we hired the crew because we couldn’t face the slaughter ourselves. In either case, the crew came with their climbing gear, their chain saws and the chipper.
The cacophony of their equipment drowned out the trees’ last shudders. Their final cracks as their trunks split could not be heard over the roar of the saws and grinding of the chipper. They gave up their lives as willingly as they had given their shade and refuge. It was all over, except for the mess of leaves and logs, in just a couple of hours.
And I was at once both relieved and saddened and thought of the conversation from Dr. Seuss’s book “The Lorax.” The Lorax asks, “which way does a tree fall?”
The Once-ler replies, “Uh down?” And the Lorax says, “A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.”
I lean toward safety but my heart cries for nature.