Trees

It was a lovely summer afternoon, and then . . . 

Let me start that again.  Yesterday featured a lovely early summer afternoon, warm but not yet too hot, more humid than one might want but not nearly as bad as things can get in the Georgia summer. I was outside, reading, ignoring the occasional gnat that wanted to annoy me.  No breeze, calm air.  I could hear my neighbors playing with their toddler son next door - the sounds of a child's laughter and some music that sounded like it might have been Sticky Fingers-era Rolling Stones (but wasn't).  A nice, post-covid afternoon in the neighborhood.

Then I heard another sound, a cracking, chopping kind of sound.  Then a loud snap, followed by what sounded like a string of firecrackers.  Someone in the neighborhood is getting ready for July Fourth, I thought.  And then I heard that distinctive sound of a tree falling, that simultaneous rush of leaves and splitting of wood. A sound I've come to know all too well and realized another tree had just fallen in the 'hood.

It didn't fall on me, and from the sound it seemed that it had fallen on the other side of the woods that separates my street from the next.  I went inside to see if I still had electricity or if the tree had managed to hit power lines, and was relieved to see the lights (and AC) were still on.

I walked around the block and saw that the top half of one tree in that wooded park had fallen over (see above), and part of the tree was still dangling from the main trunk.  Something else to fall the next time we have a storm. Great.  No one was hurt and no property damage.  In fact, judging from the absence of anyone else out investigating the treefall, no one other than myself had even noticed.  My next-door neighbor was still delighting his son in his backyard to the same music I had heard before.

But it was a grim reminder to me of the inevitability of falling trees, even on a day without heavy winds, falling rain, or other severe weather. As random a moment as one could guess.  I'm still somewhat PTSD'd from the tree that fell on my house late last October when Hurricane Eta passed through, and I felt that Mother Nature was warning me. "Don't relax, buddy boy.  I still have tons and tons of timber up 20, 30, and more feet over your head, which I can drop at any time.  What goes up, must come down."

I went back indoors for the rest of the day.

Koyaanisqatsi, Hopi for "life out of balance," or more specifically, "man out of balance with nature." I want to love and cherish trees, to care for them and appreciate then, and they in turn to protect and nourish me, but instead I feel threatened by them and want to cut them down.  I worry about them every time it rains.  And they fall with shocking frequency around here, taking out electrical power, damaging cars and houses, and even killing the occasional unfortunate.  Yesterday, they reminded me that they didn't even need a hurricane to get me if that's what they wanted to do.  

This was Creek country, not Hopi, but I doubt the indigenous here would have been any more approving of my attitude toward trees.