{"id":1618,"date":"2024-06-10T15:43:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T19:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/?p=1618"},"modified":"2024-06-10T16:15:37","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T20:15:37","slug":"paradise-undone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/10\/paradise-undone\/","title":{"rendered":"Paradise Undone"},"content":{"rendered":"
My Dad was part of a small group of people who together owned 130 acres of
\na wonderful mixture of hardwood forest, meadows, hillside and creek bottom.
\nI have meandered that part of Mother Earth since I was old enough to trek
\nout on my own, probably around age 10. We called this woods \u201cthe Rock Creek
\nwoods\u201d.<\/p>\n

A big part of the majesty of the woods on the steepest hillside was the
\nmixture of many thousands of oaks and hemlocks in various stages of
\nmaturity, including some old, grandfather trees. These two tree species
\nseemed to enjoy each others company, and grew in patches of their own kind
\nas well as a random oak or hemlock growing side by side.<\/p>\n

Because the woods had not been logged in many generations, there were old,
\ndecaying trees lying here and there on the forest floor, becoming nurse
\nlogs for other various emerging scrub and young trees of all sorts. Beech
\nand hickory could also be found here, and a generous sprinkling of maples
\nrounded out the majority of the trees to be found.<\/p>\n

If one were to traverse this hillside from top to bottom, no doubt with at
\nleast a few episodes of feet slipping out from under due to the steepness,
\nyou would every 50 yards or so come to a place of leveling out for perhaps
\n50 or 75 feet. These \u201cshelves\u201d as I came to know them provided texture to
\nthe landscape, as well as convenient resting places. Standing or sitting on
\nthe shelves gave the greatest view left or right, as they ran as far as the
\neye could see, that is until various trees blocked that view.<\/p>\n

I spent hundres of hours in this woods. More than once I had encounters
\nwith other beings there that impacted me and have stayed with me for life.
\nOne such time, I was standing still next to a large hemlock, gazing out
\nover a shelf, looking left and right. Quietly, with no evidence of
\napproach, a great horned owl landed on a branch of that tree about eye
\nlevel, maybe 6 feet from where I stood. Another time I was up in a tree and
\na mother black bear and two cubs walked by me about 15 feet away, never
\nhaving any awareness of my presence.<\/p>\n

There came a time when the owners of the property were approached by a
\nlogger. He was interested in harvesting the mature timber. Because of taxes
\nand other ongoing expenses, the owners decided to sell the trees to this
\nlogger. I knew that this even would change what I had come to view as my
\nown personal cathedral forest. I had no idea.<\/p>\n

The next time I entered the woods, I am sure my mouth dropped open in
\namazement and sadness at what my eyes saw. The steep hillside was carved up
\nand down, this way and that with newly created logging \u201cspurs\u201d, a means for
\nthe bulldozers to haul out the newly cut logs to a staging area. These new
\nspurs were cut deeply into the earth, exposing raw soil and combined with
\nthe steepness of the hillside, allowing for rain to wash out many channels
\nand much topsoil in the process.<\/p>\n

The \u201duseless\u201d tops of the harveste trees lay all over, discarded like
\ncarcasses, obscuring the ability to see any distance and making walking
\nthrough the woods a serious challenge. All of the mature trees had been cut
\ndown and their valuable sawlogs removed, leaving weeping stumps and broken
\nneighboring trees as casualties.<\/p>\n

The feelings of grief that welled up in me in those first days was nearly
\noverwhelming. I had recently read Lord of the Rings, and I could not help
\nbut think of Mordor. My cathedral woods had been turned into a deeply
\nwounded part of the back of Mother Earth. There was a part of me that
\nclearly felt my own grief in a way I had never known. I know now that this
\ngrief went well beyond my own personal grief. My lifelong, deep connection
\nto the trees and especially to this particular piece of the earth revealed
\nto me that these relatives, too, were grieving. I could literally feel the
\nloss of something immeasurable, something beyond words, a loss that was
\nshared by far more beings than just me. The owl would need to find other
\nareas to hunt and lite. Momma bear would not find the same kind of shelter
\nhere that she had in the past. My continuing forays into this woods
\nrevealed that the foxes and the deer and the coyotes and the grouse cared
\nless for this woods now that it was changed.<\/p>\n

It has probably been about 10 years now since I walked that particular
\nwoods. I did spend a lot of time there even after the logging took place.
\nEach time I did so, my grief was renewed again, though perhaps slightly
\nless so. I still had similar (but different) nearby woods to trek, and this
\nsoothed to some degree. Still, the loss of Rock Creek woods as I knew it,
\nas it was in my growing up years, my teens, my twenties and into my
\nthirties, is real. I\u2019ve not seen a woodcock since the woods was logged.
\nI\u2019ve not seen a silver fox, nor had a pileated woodpecker visit me from 2
\nfeet away, sharing in a short staring contest. My grief continues. I
\nsometimes wonder how the grief of the trees, the four leggeds, the winged
\nones, the Earth in that place is healing. I suspect that for some of our
\nrelatives from that place, the grief is ongoing.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Dad was part of a small group of people who together owned 130 acres of a wonderful mixture of hardwood forest, meadows, hillside and creek bottom. I have meandered that part of Mother Earth since I was old enough … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_ecp_custom_2":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acceptingcollapse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}