Felling Trees

They cut down the last three pine trees on the hillside they've been clear cutting in Glen Canyon Park over the weekend (just the entranceway behind the tennis courts, and not the whole park.)  The pine trees had also been tagged as "invaders, just as many of the acacia and eucalyptus and olive that took over the park over a century ago, but they were doing a pretty good job of posing as native trees.

Just days before, I saw a red-tailed hawk perched in the tallest pine, saying his goodbyes.

I met a woman photographing the barren hillside last night, and we talked some.  When I mentioned to her that it was hard to see 100-plus-foot trees fall, she laughed and said it was a welcome change.  She said she's been working with trees her whole life and the ones they've chosen to fell were "all the right ones" and that "they're terrible for the environment."  I replied something like, "That's why the owls and hawks live in them."  She insisted that those birds would have nothing to do with the trees they chose to fell, and that she was looking forward to the diversity the change would bring.  I smiled, and said nothing, but inwardly I was crying, thinking, "Tell that to the hawk."

Yes, there's nothing so fulfilling as change, I say.  That's why I feel so empty inside.

Marked Tree 6 of 400.   Surely you, too, are a safety hazard.