Sometimes being green takes shape in the strangest ways. I never thought it would mean I had to cut down trees.
Where I live, the forest fire potential is pretty high. So the park service asks that you “thin” your trees – so they are not touching limbs. Ideally, they would like you to have one tree every ten feet.
My property was logged about twenty years ago. Huge piles of faded, ghostly gray limbs clutter the ground. And thousands of little, narrow trees, about five to six feet high, crowd each other in search of sun. The forest is so thick that literally, if you tried to run into it, you would bounce off.
I know that thinning is inevitable but the thought of it makes me cringe. I had to remove some of the small trees recently so I could walk through and despite apologizing to each one as I chopped it, the guilt overwhelmed me to tears.
My gentle mother even tried to make me feel better. “Sorry you had to do that,” she said. “Think of the freedom you gave to the surrounding trees. Now they can spread out, soak up more sun, and grow freely & be healthy. Too many trees can choke each other.” Nice try, Mom.
I needed to come up with a method to help me deal with the upcoming mass murder of the little trees. It was time to toughen up.
I started with: “I’m a writer, people have to cut down trees to make paper, and my books are printed on paper.” It seemed like a good logic, but it wasn’t going to cut it.
This planet is covered in trees. There are too many trees, I told myself. Trees just get in the way, and you end up breaking your back to cut them down. Darn trees, they are a pain in the neck.
In fact, trees are just pesky…littering the ground with needles, pine cones and leaves. And who decided raking leaves was a good idea? Just cut the tree down and be done with it.
Nope, didn’t work. I still love my trees: each and every one of them.
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Thanks for posting about this, I would like to read more about this topic.
I’m still hoping to figure out a way to save the small trees as the forest is thinned: instead of cutting them down, pull them out roots and all. Then I could put them up on freecycle.org and/or Craig’s List as an offer for free trees. The added issue is that the trees at my altitude may not fair well in someone else’s yard at a lower altitude, so they would end up dying there. It is a conundrum for certain!