What Once Was
I’m sitting on the porch of the family cabin, overlooking the lake as the sun dips below the rolling hills and beneath the horizon. The air is cool — much cooler than back home — and the atmosphere is more serene. The only sounds I hear, past the mechanical clicking of the keyboard and the breathing of family around me, are the chirps of crickets and the sloshing of water against the dock.
This property has long been a favorite place of mine. I have learned more about myself in these woods than anywhere else. There’s deep meaning baked into each and every tree, rock, microscopic piece of dirt.
Alas, all good things have a tendency of ending, and so must this. While the property is still ours, clearly, and we frequent it often, it is much different than it was just ten years ago, let alone the almost forty years it’s been in my family’s name.
The pine trees that my father, mother, and grandparents planted in the field have been dead for a while now, taken out by some disease, the grove not containing enough diversity to protect itself.
The trails my father made through the woods, where we all ran fourwheelers and dirtbikes, many are close to overgrown while others have been made by commercial loggers, hired to take down ash trees for a pretty penny. A shame, as they’re beautiful trees and the section they grew in is now a clearing with too much light. Fine for the undergrowth, a shame for all else.
Most recently, my father has worked to cut down many — far too many — trees in the “back yard.” Approaching the house tonight, I was shocked by the amount of light that was being let in. No longer do you look to the sky and see branches of oaks and birches and sycamores. Instead, only sky.
What Still Could Be
Not all of this is bad. The pine grove will start anew, as it already has begun to, this time with more diversified growth brought in from the deer and birds. The clearing on the mountain shows an abundance of life, with small trees and brush growing tall and lush. In the back yard, the ground will turn green once again, a small but healthy sign that nature always perseveres.
If it isn’t already obvious, I do not at all agree with the choices made on the property by my family. Not when it comes to nature, at least. My grandfather fears the trees around the house will fall, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Save for a few, they are all healthy with many more decades of life within them. And if they do fall upon the house? You ensure no one was injured, and you use the wood and repair the house. After all, you can’t have a house in the woods without the woods. Else you’ll soon end up with a house in a clearing, and you’ll bitch that the cost of heating/cooling is too high, that there’s no shade, that there’s no fresh air.
One day, this property will be mine. One day, this property will return to what it once was. One day, this property will be brought back to its natural state.
— C