An Untimely Demise

After finishing my morning yoga stretch class at the Talisman, I decided to make a quick beeline to the library before heading home. Prior to coming across the moving image (literally) of a man harnessed to a lone evergreen, I could smell the sweet tangible scent of pine oil, thick and heady (a wood chipper was grinding away the remnants of a chainsaw’s cuttings). Instantly thoughts of my sister Aaron came to mind, envisioning her at work ‘hugging’ and pruning trees, chainsaw in one hand and ropes & karabiners in the other.

Atop a 40 foot towering pine (its trunk thin in diameter but still statuesque and magnificent) was attached an Arborist. At first glance, it looked as if he were trimming the branches of only the 1 of 3 pines standing alone on the property of a Church. But waiting around awhile and watching him work, I was struck by overpowering emotions at the vision of his slow desecration of this healthy tall coniferous … I have never seen a tree felled before, so to say that I was taken aback by the large lump in my throat and the tears in my eyes, is an understatement. The waves of loss were too much as I watched the tree-top fall mercilessly to the ground … that final top cutting could have been someone’s beautiful Christmas tree, it was so big and bushy and lush! But instead, the Yule tree was fed to the chipper, crushed to a pulp with only it’s sweet smell and morbid earth scar left as reminders of it’s existence. A sad day for Mother Earth and for myself.