earth day
The Earth Day Garden Party had gone well, the day before they cut down the old maple tree on the corner.
That’s what I kept thinking as I watched the guys from the tree removal service bring down the severed maple limbs. Spanish flew from ground to treetop and back again, as crows a block away cawed their unheeded alarm. Chains saws buzzed like angry hornets; men worked like ants, picking up enormous chunks of branch onto their shoulders, staggering under the weight of spring wet wood, then dumping it unceremoniously into their metal trailer. Earth Day.
All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man… the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. – Chief Seattle
It was not an ancient tree. It was not a sapling here on Marshall Street during the reign of the Egyptian pharaohs. GreenPeace did not set up treehouses and refuse to come down, nor did they spike the trunk against the saw. In fact, people just went about their usual business, drove past with a quick glance at the noisy project, continued talking on their phones as they walked by. After all, this was a nonevent. This was not the end of the giant sequoia named General Sherman; the maple was unnamed. It was not ancient – it was just old.
I thought about the old people who had lived in my building previously, for decades under the westerly shade of that huge maple, cool protection from Denver’s unrelenting sun on summer afternoons. The tree’s shadow draped across both the building on the corner and ours next door, leaves fluttering, birds calling. The trees were one of the reasons I chose this apartment.
A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at? – Ronald Reagan
But the maple was also sickly and imperfect, as we get when we become older. It still provided shade, but had some dead limbs, leafless patches here and there. As I listened to the chainsaws, I thought of Betty, her intelligent eyes, self-possessed beauty of her wrinkled and freckled skin, thick silver hair pulled up, telling me in the hallway how she had lived here for 23 years before the new owners raised all the rents hundreds of dollars and priced her out of her home. She held a box of personal mementos in her hands as we spoke. She carried it out to the backseat of her car, and then, she just drove away. That was it. I never saw her again.
…there are always tremors when a great tree falls. – Rajiv Gandhi
Old age, fixed income. That’s what made them all vulnerable. That’s why David in the apartment below mine loaded up his old Subaru with his fishing poles and tackle box, pots and pans and clothes, heading to stay in the basement of a friend in another city. That’s why Rick, the mile-a-minute endless storyteller, is moving his recliners and multiple TVs into veteran housing. That’s why Our Lady of The Back Stairs no longer slowly pushes her trash bag with her foot along the downstairs hallway and out to the dumpster. She has just disappeared, gone in a day, like the tree.
Ye are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch. – Baha’u’llah
It’s such a loss. I feel robbed, that angry, hurt, helpless feeling of outrage and futility. The other reason I really liked this apartment was the mix of people – different cultures, ages, perspectives. It was surreal to watch from my third floor bedroom window as now Kathy set out her yard sale, the next white-haired neighbor to display on the lawn her boxes of books, lamps, dishes, linens, trinkets, all the things she did not have room for as she moved into the senior housing she’d been lucky enough to find. With my cup of coffee, I walked to the balcony doors, where I watched and listened as the maple tree groaned and split, it’s twigs and leaves strewn across the grass and sidewalk, just like Kathy’s yard sale. All the little bits of their lives that nobody really needed.
God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. – John Muir
The noncommital shoppers meandered through the yard sale, the tree men sawed branches to length and tossed them over the side of the trailer. I sipped my coffee, room to room, window to window, slowly back and forth, watching both lives come down as crows picked at the remains of a squirrel in the street, and the afternoon turned overcast and threatened rain.
Every crag and gnarled tree and lonely valley has its own strange and graceful legend attached to it. – Douglas Hyde
