After the Storm, the Questions
August, 2009 March, 2010
Twenty-four trees in under twenty-four hours. Far less terrible than what happened in Haiti or Chile, but still—not good. Two dozen trees toppled by big winds.
About most of the trees, I feel only a generic sense of amazement and disappointment that the wind can wreak such damage. But there are a few trees whose destruction catches my breath, makes me stop short. The spruce in the way-back, the curvy pine at the edge of the sea, the cluster of birches beyond the promise of my studio window; I grieve for them.
What I am wondering about is why? I don’t mean that callously. I know I’ll miss the pine at the ocean’s edge because its shape was lovely. But why do I grieve for this spruce tree, but not its neighbor, also felled. Why that stand of birches, and not the other one of equal stature that had lived at the edge of the leach field?
A tree that is part of a view, or that is old and stately, or that shows evidence of having endured other hardships, or that is somehow unlike its neighbors. Those are reasons (I suspect) we single out certain trees for special affection. That we pick them, and assign our affections.
But what of the others, whom we come to love for no clear reason? Do they pick us? Hail us to their cause in ways we’ve yet to comprehend? And if so, how? And if so, why?
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