Clearing Trees and Dreams
The Airedale takes the DH and me for a long walk everyday, rain or shine--mostly rain. However this spring we've had some lovely warm, sunny days like yesterday. All around our five year old neighborhood, new starter castles are being built and we happily sidewalk superintend each of them. A new development that's been posted since we moved in has finally broken ground for 48 houses. Everyday we check out the heavy equipment, well, the DH does while the Airedale sniffs around for just the right place in the newly turned up soil. I stare all agog and marvel at the fifty foot trees now laying in limbless log piles.
Yesterday we met one of the neighbors who lives on the boundary of the new development. He was staring up into a tall fir, listening to a woodpecker trying to get a last meal before the tree was felled. When he greeted us he immediately explained the craziness of the environmentalists clearing all the trees on the acreage but leaving only a handful of sixty foot firs. These lonely trees will come crashing down in the first big windstorm as their root systems are shallow and they'll no longer have buffering trees to protect them from the high winds we get in the winter. I envisioned Tree Beard, the tree herder or Ent from the Lord of Rings, creeping across the destroyed forest exhorting, verrrryy slowly, his four or five remaining friends to march with him to the developer's house and sacrifice their lives upon it.
After we commiserated at length, the neighbor guardian of the forest launched into the story of his serious health issues and wish to sell out his property that includes four outbuildings full to the roof with the stuff of their lives. He and "Momma" want to hit the road full time in their RV. The DH and I wished him well and resumed our walk, talking about trees and dreams of happiness often delayed by life's new developments. I recalled what marriage and family therapist, Neil Rosenthal, once wrote: "Vow to live life to its fullest, and follow your own interests and passions wherever they may lead. The secret to happiness is to make sure you're really living."
Mmmmmmmmmmelinda
Yesterday we met one of the neighbors who lives on the boundary of the new development. He was staring up into a tall fir, listening to a woodpecker trying to get a last meal before the tree was felled. When he greeted us he immediately explained the craziness of the environmentalists clearing all the trees on the acreage but leaving only a handful of sixty foot firs. These lonely trees will come crashing down in the first big windstorm as their root systems are shallow and they'll no longer have buffering trees to protect them from the high winds we get in the winter. I envisioned Tree Beard, the tree herder or Ent from the Lord of Rings, creeping across the destroyed forest exhorting, verrrryy slowly, his four or five remaining friends to march with him to the developer's house and sacrifice their lives upon it.
After we commiserated at length, the neighbor guardian of the forest launched into the story of his serious health issues and wish to sell out his property that includes four outbuildings full to the roof with the stuff of their lives. He and "Momma" want to hit the road full time in their RV. The DH and I wished him well and resumed our walk, talking about trees and dreams of happiness often delayed by life's new developments. I recalled what marriage and family therapist, Neil Rosenthal, once wrote: "Vow to live life to its fullest, and follow your own interests and passions wherever they may lead. The secret to happiness is to make sure you're really living."
Mmmmmmmmmmelinda
posted by MMMelinda at 8:20 AM
