Tag: clear cutting

Topsyturvey-World

~ Linda Wright ~ 1 Comment

When a song gets in my head and I just can’t seem to stop hearing it, I wonder why. Today that song is Natalie Merchant’s “Topsyturvey-World” From the album Leave Your Sleep. This song speaks to my inner child, the child who was born with blood that would not clot. My world could be tipped upside down by a tumble onto the sidewalk. People didn’t understand what I could do safely and what I could not. Many tried to confine me, others pitied me, some avoided me, a few were frightened by me.

Isolated at home with an injury until it healed, I did the things I could do, things I enjoyed, things I was skilled at. I practiced problem solving while other children my age practiced raising a hand before speaking. I wasn’t afraid.

Of course I preferred being with other children, but when I could not, I learned to reach out to friends on the telephone, laughing, joking, even playing magic tricks. These moments of joy sustained me until I could rejoin the outer world. I wrote letters to aunts and uncles, pen pals and one boy who I didn’t know. He was a friend of a friend who had broken his back falling from a horse. He was in a hospital bed and might never walk again. He didn’t feel sorry for me and I didn’t feel sorry for him.

In many ways I feel prepared for the Covid-19 virus that is bearing down on my part of the world. I know more than many of my friends about ways to cope when I am afraid, or lonely, or uncertain.

The lessons I have learned in my lifetime have given me an advantage in this time of pandemic. I believe for most of us uncertainty is the norm. It means we are human and the one thing we can count on is change.

I have never met anyone who has not experienced a disaster or a loss that turned them upside down. That doesn’t stop us from experiencing joy. Joy, bursts up in unexpected moments. You don’t need to cling to it, just notice it.

Joy can unstick you from anxiety and propel you into action. Joy is your super power. It can lead you to do the next right thing, the most compassionate thing, and for now that is stay home.

“Inside the word “emergency” is “emerge”; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Roots and Trees: A Familial Legacy in Nova Scotia

Graywood Cemetery
~ Linda Wright

My grandfather and great grandfather cleared forests to build homes and establish farms in Nova Scotia, Canada. They made their living chopping down trees for timber, rolling logs down Bear River, loading them into cargo for shipment abroad. Now those ancestors are buried in ground sheltered by trees. My family roots are entangled with trees.

I have watched as my uncle split wood and fill the cast iron stove so that my mother could make breakfast. I have seen the sap drip from a maple tree into a tin bucket and smelled the smoke mingled with the sweet scent of sap boiling until it becomes syrup. I have climbed my grandmother’s apple tree and sat perched on one of its branches. Some of my fondest memories are of trees.

On my front porch there is a pile of cord wood. When the first chill of winter comes. I will strike a wooden match on the side of the stove and hear the crackle as that match catches the tinder and kindling into flame. I will feel the chill leave the air as the heat from the stove warms the dining room.

Most of all I will be grateful for the trees that remain standing. Without them on the planet we would not have clean air to breathe and fresh water to drink.

Day 24 (of 31 days of free writing)

Awake

~ Linda Wright

Pulled out of a deep sleep, I became conscious of what seemed to be the whine of a thousand-pound mosquito. No, I realized someone was sawing a tree. The thud when the tree fell vibrated in my chest. It invaded my peaceful quiet. The annoying whine buzzed on and on.

Later that day, I drove to the post office. Just a block away from home, I slowed the car as I approached the stop light on the corner and saw the clutter of downed trees and heavy equipment parked on both sides of the street. So that was where all this noise was coming from. The traffic light turned green and I went on my way.

The month before we had noticed a new sign at this corner announcing, “Luxury Home for Sale.” We laughed. Before then, at the end of the unpaved driveway there had been a metal gate with a sign reading “KEEP OUT.” We thought there was a house somewhere behind all that bramble. We pictured a recluse living in a run down house, perhaps with a loaded rifle standing his ground.

Yet the next time I set out on an errand in that direction, I was startled to see the lot completely cleared and the ground flat. There was no house, apparently there never was one. I now had a clear view of our next door neighbor’s back yard and house.

As I waited for the light to change, I caught a glimpse of motion in my peripheral vision. Above my car a Red Tailed Hawk gently descended heading to where only a day or two before there had been trees. It crossed over my windshield gliding, wings spread wide. The outstretched feathers displayed an intricate pattern in staggered checks of tan and brown. Then seeing no trees to land upon, it tilted slightly, gave its powerful wings a flap, and lifted skyward. I gasped at its beauty.

I wondered if the hawk was as startled as I to see the empty space. I imagined bird and squirrel nests crashing to the ground when the trees were felled. I imagined the Live Oak, Pine, Arrow Wood, Magnolia and dozens of other trees in our property sensing some biochemical impact when their companions were killed.

Day by day the changes are so gradual we don’t notice, but they are there. Clear cutting land to build a house seems so harmless. But we know that trees change our water table and our air quality. Wangari Maathai was awarded the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work planting trees. It wasn’t just my peaceful sleep that was disturbed by the removal of those trees.

Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come… Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed, to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder.


Wangari Maathai