09/14/2025
Twenty-one trees. Or 23. I can’t seem to remember right now. Twenty-one (or 23) trees being taken down right now, all around me. I am safely in the house. They are unsafely (for the trees) outside, being felled.
All of them are being taken down for good reasons. Safety for the humans or safety for the houses, or safety for the other trees.
Still, I sit here sad (and working on being very grateful), overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. The thought that many of these trees have stood here long before I was born, all have stood here since long before we moved in to Valley Forge Farm, many years ago, makes me feel too very sad.
Mighty oaks are saying good-bye, after over a hundred years of standing here, watching humans come and watching humans go; children grow and one of those children, by then a grown man with a grown child of his own, dying within sight of the oaks, the same oaks who watched him grow, then watched him die.
Cedars that tower over the house.
Pines that lean perilously towards the house and were the impetus for us doing all this work.
A very old hickory at the end of its long, long life. Shagbark Hickories, which this tree is, typically live around 200-350 years. Did this Hickory, which stands over the road, watch as the British soldiers came through, stealing cows and food from the local farmers? (The man who owned this property during the Revolutionary War claimed his farm was raided by British troops and was later reimbursed by the young US government for his losses.) Did this tree offer hiding for our own troops who at night would sneak away from their own camps, to, also, raid local farmers for food as the developing government hadn't quite learned how to supply enough food for our own troops stationed at Valley Forge? No matter what this Hickory saw, it now leans too far, and is on its very last leg, or rather, its last trunk, decaying and dying and threatening anything that walks underneath it.
A Black Locust tree crowding an evergreen.
A Sassafras (which has the best name of any tree), too tired to keep standing on its own, leans heavily on its neighbor.
The trees each have their own reasons for coming down. None of them going away makes me happy. They are alive, after all.
I imagine them looking down at me, the young upstart (only trees of this age can see a 59 year old as an upstart) having them taken down. I imagine them sad, and therefore, I am sad.
So my new job is to not be sad (or silly sad, which is how it feels: silly to be sad.) I wept already today. (No surprise.) I asked hubby for a hug while my body processed all the changes here. Hubby held me, then told me that we are good at changes.
I was surprised. I mean, he's good at change. But me? I’m horrible at changes, aren’t I? I thought of my oldest sister who always said she hated changes. I thought of how I always identified with her in that (and in most things.)
Then I thought of her changes. Where she went from living in a tiny town without even one traffic light; a town with more cows than people; an old town in upstate NY with lush, green rolling hills, and in her 60s and after decades in that little town, moved to dry, flat, hot, huge, somewhat young Dallas, TX. I thought of those times she used to feel uncomfortable leaving the borders of her tiny farm community and would close her eyes as her husband drove many hours along the interstate back home to visit relatives outside of Philadelphia, and how she eventually got comfortable taking the train down to Philly all by herself when her parents needed her for regular visits. Was she really bad at changes, after all? Was I? Yes, I was feeling the change of the property; the loss of 21 (or 23) trees in my body, but maybe I wasn’t so bad at change, after all. I had moved across the country, hadn't I? And eventually moved back, again. And years before, I had moved across an ocean (and moved back, again.) I have had all sorts of changes and sometimes, maybe, just maybe, I am good at change, after all.
I had already spent time this morning singing (when I really, really, REALLY didn’t feel like it, but did because I knew I needed to.) “This is the day, this is the day that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made, we will rejoice, we will rejoice and be glad in it, and be glad in it.” Over and over, again, as I drove home from the local recycling center. But still, still it was hard and still I was sad.
After the hug from hubby, I started to clean the kitchen sink. (I know the cleaning of the sink seems like a non-sequitur, but I suspect doing the things that have to get done is part of dealing with change sometimes. What is that quote, or rather the interpretation of a saying by Antonio Machado? "Traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking.")
While I did that, I still felt sad.
Hubby wandered in and asked, “You OK?”
“It’s the sound of the trees,” I told him, then I trailed off.
“You mean the sound of them being cut down, or are they speaking to you?”
I thought it was a funny, or rather, strange question. “Of course, it’s the sound of them being cut down,” I thought. But then I contemplated his question and finally asked myself. “What would the trees be saying if they were talking to me right now?”
“Traitor!!!”?
"Young upstart!”?
Would they scream in pain?
“You’re awful!!!,” would they say?
I didn’t want to know. I didn't want to hear. But still, his question nagged at me.
So, as I washed, and as much as I didn’t want to know, I spent a minute (while I scrubbed) asking, “Do you have anything you want to say to me?” I knew it was nuts and I know trees don’t speak and I know it’s silly, but could it be much more silly than not liking change in a world full of change, or being sad at the thought of these trees going away?
So, I asked them.
And, if you can believe it, the thought that came to me was NOT a thought of criticism, or pain or sadness.
It was gratitude. It was relief, and even a little excitement. I imagined it coming from the largest oak in the backyard. I imagined its gratitude that its tired body no longer needed to hold up its branches, to stand, tall and strong and proud. It was grateful that it was now getting to move on to the next phase of its life.
I had the thought that maybe each stage was as important as this one had been.
Yes, I know, it's a ridiculous thought to imagine a tree speaking to you. But the lightness of a thought that I couldn’t have even formed, let alone created a minute before, all of a sudden existing because I had asked a question was just so lovely. Where there had been heaviness, there was now tender weightlessness. Where there had been guilt, there was now… nothing. Just happiness. A little happy anticipation of its next step.
Am I still having a hard time looking outside? Yeah, it’ll take me a bit to get used to it. To seeing the light filter through where there used to be shade. To see sky where there used to be green.
As I type, I marvel when another part of a tree falls and heavily hits the ground so hard that we can feel the earth shake, the vibration reaching out all around it.
I feel the buzz of 19 men and 8 or 9 trucks working all at once, in 3 different parts of the property.
When I get done writing this, I’ll head outside. I’ll watch them work. I’ll thank the trees for being here, once more. But instead of apologizing to them (as I had earlier today), I’ll imagine them going to the next part of their journey. The portable saw mill will be here in a few days to mill down the larger logs, and from that furniture makers will create beauty, that will stand in homes for generations to come. John and I will use other milled parts of the tree to make cutting boards, and charcuteries boards. Yet, still other parts of the trees will become smaller things: a lamp, a vase, pegs & hooks, a cake knife, Christmas ornaments, herb st*****rs, letter openers and bookends. We'll sell those, and they'll go live in other people's homes and be used with joy and love or even indifference. I don't know if it'll matter to the tree. It will continue to exist.
Even the parts of the trees that won’t be made into something will have a purpose, a journey. They’ll become wood chips in a local path, as truckload after truckload after truckload has gone to the local recycling center today, where neighbors will pick them up and use them.
Other parts of the trees will stay with us, and on cool autumn evenings (or cold winter nights) be used as firewood to keep us warm. To gather neighbors around and cook potatoes and meat and laugh and reminisce or just talk about that day’s events.
Then when the fires die out and the ashes cool, we’ll use the wood ash, to feed the peony bushes, the forsythia and the lilacs, and the calcium, potassium and phosphorous that are now part of the trees will then become part of the plants, and the flowers, which will then bloom in the Spring.
I’ll imagine that each and every step of their journey is important, even the parts that just make their way into the earth, creating more soil, which will in turn create more food and more potatoes and more onions and more life for humans and animals.
Each is a vital part of life: birth, growth, decay, death. And for them, for these trees, death doesn’t come today at the chopping down of these mighty trees, but they still live on until the last of their cells have deteriorated, maybe after moving through the cells of another plant and turned to v***r and disappeared into the sky, becoming part of the big cycle of life.
Today isn't the end for these trees.
After I wrote this I did go outside and walked around to see the trees, the trunks, the branches and leaves.
Under one of the oaks that had come down I found two acorns. A gift from the tree, a next generation, if we want. And I do. I do want. (Now I just have to figure out how to grow a mighty oak from these small acorns. Fortunately, the knowledge of that great act is contained in these tiny seeds and they know exactly what to do. I suspect that I merely need to get out of the way.)
And I imagine that long after I am gone, long after I am dead, they will still live, probably for another century or two, until it is time for them, too, to come down (and for their babies, their acorns to be born) and maybe someone else will make something from them to continue living and serving in other homes for more and more generations after that.
And now, for the most part, I feel better. And so, so grateful for these beautiful giants who have graced Valley Forge Farm all these years. And for the gift they were from their maker. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This truly is the day that the Lord has made and I am finally rejoicing and being glad in it.
