My mother lives in Ohio and when she comes to my home in the Pacific Northwest to visit, she can’t stop talking about the evergreen trees out here, how tall they are, and beautiful.
I’ve learned that it’s a good thing to see one’s everyday surroundings through the eyes of a visitor. The things I sometimes take for granted--views of snow-covered mountains, even in the summer, and how amazingly green it is here--are indeed gifts, and when my mom visits I’m reminded that I live in one very special place.
The trees that my mom loves are, unfortunately, a valuable commodity here. One of my neighbors had a death in their family recently and they had to cut down many of the big trees on their property to pay funeral costs. Another neighbor is going through a divorce and I saw yesterday that she’s cutting an access road into the woods on her land. I’m afraid those trees might be the latest casualty of a marriage gone bad, a way my neighbor will buy-out her ex-husband’s financial share of the place.
Every spring I buy doug fir and cedar seedling trees from our local conservation organization. I’ve planted hundreds of trees in the 13 years we’ve lived on our place, and the babies grow in the shadows of the giant old cedars that were here when we came. Some of the first seedlings I planted, 10 inches high when I put them in the ground, are probably 15 feet tall now.
I understand my neighbors’ needs to pay their bills, but I also know that if Leah and I fell on financial hard times, I would sell my soul before I cut down the trees.
