Nakedness

The other morning we were on our way to Q's well baby check. G, E, Q and I were riding merrily along through the lovely trees, enjoying the (cooler) summer morn, when we rounded a corner and behold, the trees were gone. Gone. Acres of them. Enormous stumps, roots in the air, miscellaneous brush and ferns scattered and stirred like so much dirty salad. The place was crawling with ravenous machinery, busily devouring the carcasses of huge green firs. Acres and acres and acres.

As we sat at the light adjacent to the properties undergoing "development" and fought nausea, Albinoni's Adagio in G came on the radio. It was a fitting requiem for the forest. I may be part dryad, because I could have sworn I could hear the trees screaming. Maybe it was just the rush of horror in my own ears. That night I dreamt the scene in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" in which the trees are wailing, wandering.

There will be nearly 4000 new houses built there. Not one of them worthy of the space they consume, all of them built so close together that they'll require their inhabitants to seek help for claustrophobia. This is the same space in which, just weeks ago, we watched a bald eagle wheel and cry. The forest has been pushed back farther and no one seems to fathom the far-reaching destruction, even as it unfolds before their eyes.

Progress. Bah.