A fresh path was sliced through the forest this week, and there's suddenly new sky where there were just old branches. The air is thick with the scent of sliced pine and churned soil, and the bending ferns are crushed beneath a thick carpet of amputated hemlock boughs.The dog, eager to investigate, bounds ahead to follow the winding path of the woodman's tractor. My own feet twist in the soft earth, catch on a lacerated root, the uncovered stone. The wide new path is edged in white tree stumps, oozing thick tears of amber sap, auburn rings like wrinkles showing age. Trees whose swaying tops have been edging slowly skyward for decades, long before something possessed me to buy a house on the edge of this forest and set off into it.
Well it's letting in more light, and it's a great path for mountain biking I tell myself, but above me I can hear the remaining leaves nervously rustling who's next to fall? and in the distance lunch break is over and the chainsaw's being roused.
5 comments:
Ugh...
Oh gosh, your writing is beautiful. I would try to think like you too, but still feel that pit in my stomach. I hope he is kind to the rest and that it goes slow. I'm glad they have you on their side. Just the thoughts and being there will help.
beautifully written, but horrible...i was so lucky that i had moved out of my parents house before the developers took the woods down on two sides of our house and put other houses in, taking quite a few beautiful old oaks and a few remnant chestnuts. The loss of any kind of wild spaces is sad, especially forests.
I hate to see old trees come down.
beautiful photo. beautiful words.
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