the new bit of sky and open ground
Trees. I hired a neighbor today to cut some down. A few of them were big, still in their prime. It’s not easy to accept their loss, even when I was the one who chose to cut them, and there are so many others on this land.
The purpose of my little logging operation was to open up the dense woods below my treehouse. I’d had some notion I’d be able to catch sight of Orcas from the treehouse tower, but when the nearer maples were taken down there proved to be still others farther away which stand between me and a view. But, at least now there’s an open space in the woods to look down into, and a patch of sky; a way to gaze into the distance. And, of course, the cut bodies of those trees represent future lumber, as well as abundant firewood in years to come.
Clearings are important in the woods: they give shape and human meaning to the land which it didn’t have before. A clearing defines place, establishes a new relationship between the person and the earth in that spot.
The deep woods are one kind of place, where the trees pursue their lives right alongside of you, claiming primacy that you have no choice but to work around. They stretch to gather up the sunlight before it can reach you, and weave their roots in deep networks beneath your feet. Their stumps and low branches and decaying logs and new seedlings all compete with you for a place to put your feet. You see them only close-up, in your foreground: the texture of bark, the hanging fan of needles.
A clearing, though, is where you can make a circle, or stand and look up at stars in the wide-open sky. You can dance there, come together and feast, make a garden or a house. There is serenity, a warm sense of being sheltered. The tarot card of the children in the walled garden conveys this. Different creatures arrive into a clearing: bats and dragonflies, owls, hawks, rabbits. The trees at the edges are seen as a background, their whole shapes visible at once.
Building my studio, it’s important to me that the place where I write allow me to gaze out across some distance. As if my thoughts will then have room to float out farther, and more of them can emerge, and the open air outside my window will link to a widened space inside my mind.
But, still. Was that really sufficient reason to saw through living organisms and end their lives? Lumber and firewood are after-thoughts, and while it’s good that the trees’ bodies won’t go to waste, it still seems faintly strange to me that I should have the right to do what I did. We counted the rings on a couple of the maples, and they were around 60 years old. That’s about the same age as Bob. They’ve been alive that long, in that spot.
It sounds silly, though, and a little precious, to be sentimental about plant life. Especially in the face of what’s done every day to animals in the world, with nervous systems and minds and emotions. Not to mention human beings. We live by killing, harvesting, utilizing other living beings (sentient and non-). You can’t get away from it There’s a movement afoot to eat local, including meat — you see the animal living on the farm where it’s raised, and you’re aware that it’s been killed so that you can eat it. Maybe it’s not such a big stretch from local food to local lumber. So that you see the trees as they were on a day like this, before they were cut, leafed out like fountains of glowing yellow in the damp and fragrant woods. The trees: I salute them.
Clearing
the new bit of sky and open ground
Trees. I hired a neighbor today to cut some down. A few of them were big, still in their prime. It’s not easy to accept their loss, even when I was the one who chose to cut them, and there are so many others on this land.
The purpose of my little logging operation was to open up the dense woods below my treehouse. I’d had some notion I’d be able to catch sight of Orcas from the treehouse tower, but when the nearer maples were taken down there proved to be still others farther away which stand between me and a view. But, at least now there’s an open space in the woods to look down into, and a patch of sky; a way to gaze into the distance. And, of course, the cut bodies of those trees represent future lumber, as well as abundant firewood in years to come.
Clearings are important in the woods: they give shape and human meaning to the land which it didn’t have before. A clearing defines place, establishes a new relationship between the person and the earth in that spot.
The deep woods are one kind of place, where the trees pursue their lives right alongside of you, claiming primacy that you have no choice but to work around. They stretch to gather up the sunlight before it can reach you, and weave their roots in deep networks beneath your feet. Their stumps and low branches and decaying logs and new seedlings all compete with you for a place to put your feet. You see them only close-up, in your foreground: the texture of bark, the hanging fan of needles.
A clearing, though, is where you can make a circle, or stand and look up at stars in the wide-open sky. You can dance there, come together and feast, make a garden or a house. There is serenity, a warm sense of being sheltered. The tarot card of the children in the walled garden conveys this. Different creatures arrive into a clearing: bats and dragonflies, owls, hawks, rabbits. The trees at the edges are seen as a background, their whole shapes visible at once.
Building my studio, it’s important to me that the place where I write allow me to gaze out across some distance. As if my thoughts will then have room to float out farther, and more of them can emerge, and the open air outside my window will link to a widened space inside my mind.
But, still. Was that really sufficient reason to saw through living organisms and end their lives? Lumber and firewood are after-thoughts, and while it’s good that the trees’ bodies won’t go to waste, it still seems faintly strange to me that I should have the right to do what I did. We counted the rings on a couple of the maples, and they were around 60 years old. That’s about the same age as Bob. They’ve been alive that long, in that spot.
It sounds silly, though, and a little precious, to be sentimental about plant life. Especially in the face of what’s done every day to animals in the world, with nervous systems and minds and emotions. Not to mention human beings. We live by killing, harvesting, utilizing other living beings (sentient and non-). You can’t get away from it There’s a movement afoot to eat local, including meat — you see the animal living on the farm where it’s raised, and you’re aware that it’s been killed so that you can eat it. Maybe it’s not such a big stretch from local food to local lumber. So that you see the trees as they were on a day like this, before they were cut, leafed out like fountains of glowing yellow in the damp and fragrant woods. The trees: I salute them.