Does anyone have a fucking conscience anymore?!
Following a nature-infused weekend in the East Bay ‘burbs, I return to my city-flat as calm and refreshed as one can be from a trifling three days away from the office. I’m awakened at 7am today not to the weekly sound of the trash being removed from the bins located directly underneath my bedroom window, but a buzz saw.
I live adjacent to a small alley, the other side of which resides a flat recently purchased by a pair of now-apparent heartless louts. The louts’ back garden houses three to four gorgeous old-growth trees whose leaves and branches buttress my bedroom and kitchen windows, providing the allusion of living in a treehouse. Their branches held the creatures and nests which provided a natural calm teeming with life and productivity. And, the leaves offered a veil of shade and privacy to my urban bungalow.
To watch the workers hack away at these trees put a lump in my throat and a sting in my eyes, as they efficiently pushed the trees’ now lifeless branches through a wood chipper. Imagining what else was being ground to bits in that chipper … I can’t.
Could these new owners have asked or, more likely, told their neighbors, mere renters, of their murderous intentions? Might they have waited until the fledglings fledged and the nests were empty? Maybe they could have considered how this alteration would affect the people who have lived there for years, and found the trees of comfort and beauty?
And, how do you replace something that is now completely gone?