The trees are falling. They are felled by the hands of man, the machines built with human intention to manipulate the landscape, to play god. Does man not know that god exists in these trees, standing tall among the skyline, older than any human could ever live? I find myself cursing into the dawn, walking halfway up the hill, coming upon the Monterey Cypress chopped down. The pair of great horned owls sat in that tree, hooting into the darkness, just barely a few weeks before. The view this tree provided over the bay was the one I loved the most: two tall knotty pines twisting upward into the brightening sky, while I waited for orange flames to dance over the mountain range just a few dozen miles away. And now it’s gone, the pine next to it alone. I could curse more if I found out why: was it aesthetics? Was the pine causing foundational damage to the homes on either side? Did someone not decide to build the house there while the tree was growing, quiet and tall? I have to imagine that the person who built the house and smiled at the two pines standing there, a picturesque view of the ocean and coast, the rare tree standing tall and strong. But now one is gone, and what will happen to the other? Weeping under the earth, weeping above, dust swirling in the faint breeze over the the lot. 

Then there was the redwood only a few streets away. It was the tallest tree in the neighborhood, a guardian of the trees in the area before people decided to come across the range and make their home in the town. I can only imagine what the landscape looked like then: hundreds of sequoias, hundreds of years old, fertile soil and fresh smells wafting from the earth. It must’ve been quieter then, peaceful among the canopy, the understory alive with mushrooms, shrews, birds, and coastal flowers. First the limbs came off the redwood. A ghost of what it was, unnatural in its form, contrasted with the blue sky that I wish would turn gray and cry into the earth for the loss of the last of its kind in the neighborhood that used to be theirs. It wasn’t quiet anymore: the chainsaws rang out, reverberating off the houses, as the trunk came down piece by piece, metal chains wrapped around the bark, bleeding out, life leaving. Beetles, spiders, birds, everyone had to find a new home except for the family whose yard the tree was in. The men made sure the power lines didn’t have to come down in their afternoon of destruction.

I mourn for all of these trees, the life we’ve made for our benefit, out of sync with the natural world around us. We choose how we wish to see our landscape instead of living within it. Instead of honoring the long life that has been here before us. We are determined to make our lives more convenient, more comfortable. With sadness comes anger. Who has a voice that they can use for those who can’t speak? For those who have no power? I want to protect life because I love it like I love my own body, my own family, the extension of myself. 

And now, in the morning as I walk past their graves, I smell them in their destruction, the aroma of energy pouring out, deep earth and roots wafting in the morning as the fog bank rolls back out into sea. I see their skin, their insides, ochre red sprinkled along the flowerbeds. What once towered over us now is settled back into the ground. How long will it take for us to realize our hands are not meant for this work? How long will it take for us to listen to what had grown without us? The trees have so much to tell us, and when they have fallen, will be able to hear what they had to say?