I hate it here. No one talks to trees or pauses to notice how dappled light through leaves spills onto the ground on a sunny afternoon. We are addicted to our electronic rectangles and the imaginary worlds within and have forgotten what the organized chaos of a wild forest can do for the noise in our heads
Masked contractors cut down a Cottonwood tree that was likely as old as the United States herself. I watched a video of the felling, heard the wails of the protesters trying to save her. They called her Grandmother Tree.
We are destroying ancient things to build walls and boxes. Cages.
The end of her story feels like a harbinger. A warning. Something sacred is being removed to make way for something brutal. Something selfish and grasping. A tree lives many lives, offers no judgement, just shade, sometimes fruit. And some, like the Grandmother tree, have stood for hundreds of years watching the earth spin around the sun
The President is bulldozing trees on Washington DC golf courses and removing protections for polling locations ahead of midterm elections. He is sending masked private police forces with very little rules of engagement training to round up humans who look like they don’t belong and locking them up in cages ahead of a midterm election. They plan to televise an execution. They want us to be numb to brutality and cheer in the face of death. And most people are so busy getting spoon fed news that feeds their addiction to validation that they don’t seem to be paying attention to what that means.
We have lost our way.
And I see people with glazed eyes staring at their rectangles eagerly lapping this all up and nodding, satisfied with the message that all this bad is actually good because NOW they will be safe. The trees need to go to build the wall.
I hate it here.
A walk through the woods recently lead me to a towering, many-limbed aspen tree. The aspens are connected underground. A single living organism stretching hundreds of miles in some forests. Filling in burn scars, golden leaves quaking in autumn. I leaned in and wrapped my arms around it and took several deep breaths. Something older than me has been waiting in the woods. It neither needed my hug, nor seemed particularly affected by it. But if you’re still in touch with your magic, you know the trees can talk and the aspens specifically send messages.
I told the aspen what they are doing. What you did. What I did. I told the aspen we are waging war and cutting down its cousins and lying to each other and being easily fooled, easily manipulated. I told the aspen we’ve lost our way and we need help before we lose our humanity for good.
And the aspen was silent.
There are two elms in my yard, as old as the house. Maybe older. They lean over my roof and the insurance agency told me I needed to cut them back. We won’t cover damages if they fall, I was told. I won’t cut them down because they were here first. They provide shade, homes for birds, limbs for swings. Maybe I was radicalized by Shel Silverstein, but I was also born in a place where the land is worked for crops and cattle and hunting and fishing. Where we are at the mercy of the wind and the winters are harsh. Where I am close enough to the edge of nature to hear frogs singing on summer nights and packs of coyotes hunting the high plateau. Where we respect the weather the seasons, and what it takes to thrive on the windy high plateau.
Maybe I was radicalized by the land.
Maybe I was radicalized by common decency.
Maybe I was radicalized by therapy and breath work and looking at my shadow.
Struggle, fear, manipulation, lies, insults, disinformation, loss, lack. These are not the point.
The point is what we do with them. We can destroy ancient things to try to stop them, or we can accept that uncertainty is the fabric of everything and trying to build walls around ourselves to keep it out is just a self-righteous way to become imprisoned.
I told the trees how our rectangles are making us forget the way light filtered through round, quaking leaves can be the most beautiful thing a human could see. I told them we forgot what shade feels like because we removed it to pave it over and build huge synthetic rectangles that house us and keep us separate, convinced of our superiority. I told them we are voting for people who figured out how to control our minds through these rectangles that are programmed to give us dopamine dumps every time we see something that reinforces our beliefs, and subtly nudges those beliefs into buying a thing or saying a thing or supporting a thing. I told them we forgot that trees are not easily swayed and can stand for centuries just watching the sun, moon, and the stars pass over and over, endlessly. That we forgot how to wait. We forgot how to listen. We forgot how to care. And someone who doesn’t wait listen or care is running the world and cutting down ancient things so he can build walls that imprison us and it seems like everyone has lost their minds and forgotten how to be decent.
Ancient things don’t care what rectangles say and they don’t care what humans do. And when the forests burn and the humans are bombing themselves into oblivion, the aspen will be waiting to fill in the burn scars and reach eternally up to the sky where the sun, moon, and stars circle endlessly overhead.
The wind will sigh through their leaves, the cold will crackle their limbs, and the birds will build their homes. And humans will keep on being fooled and ignoring how simple it could be if we just went outside.
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