Unwanted Trees, December 2011
Over the holiday break the forces of progress took the little patch of ponderosa trees behind the building where I work on NAU campus. A 45,000 square foot office building will be going up back there and, well, those trees had to go. But unlike another recent tree-cutting project on north campus, there was no effort made to save the trees, no facebook campaign, no twitter alerts, no "trees are people, too" posters, and no forums with the President attended by concerned employees and students that I am aware of. Instead there was only silence and a sense of crushing inevitability. A few of us grumbled and lamented the coming loss, but most greeted the news of the impending clear-cut with yawning indifference or were glad that there would soon be more office space on campus.
Unwanted Trees, September 2011
And so, with little forewarning on a day when the university was closed and most employees and students were away for the Christmas break, the contractors arrived. They were armed with a feller-buncher and a skidder and in less than two days' work the trees were gone, replaced by too much sky and a flat, brown plain of disturbed earth. Around the periphery of the plot the cutters spared a handful of the largest and oldest pines and a few clumps of younger trees, presumably to keep some semblance of a natural forest setting when the construction is complete.
Unwanted Trees, January 2012
I'm sure the University has very good reasons why we need another office building, why the last patch of undeveloped green on west campus was not worth preserving. No one asked them about the grand plan so they didn't bother telling, I guess. And after all, it's their land to do with as they please. But you know what? That reasoning is beginning to wear thin with me. Maybe I've spent too much time in bruised and burned wastelands these past couple of years, studied the aftermath of too much destruction and found too little hope in the ashes and the stubble, because I doubt they could've said anything that would've convinced me that those trees were less valuable than an office building. I think it's getting to be too late in the game to be cutting down healthy trees lightly, no matter who owns them or where they're growing.
Unwanted Trees, January 2012
And so this is my little eulogy, my little lament for those unwanted trees, the ones sacrificed for an office building. Before long the construction will be complete, a platoon of fast growing non-native scotch pines planted, and no one will remember that a little slice of forest survived there into the second decade of the 21st century. Even now, only days later, my memories of those trees are beginning to fade and take on the golden hues of the good old days.
Onwards and upwards.
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