Hi world! Chris here. Between the threat of Covid if I go anywhere and needing to finish two finals this week, I haven’t been able to do a whole lot. However, because this Sunday is father’s day, my mom and I are taking my dad out for a nice hike and I am super excited. It’s officially got the subject of trees on my brain.

If you grew up around woods like I did, you’ll know that traveling isn’t necessary to have an awesome adventure. And with that very loose connection to the theme of this blog, I decided to share a piece of nonfiction I wrote about the trees around my house.

They were brutally cut down last year and I’m still upset about it. I wrote this personal essay to explain why they were important to me and the others they influenced.

Now, in light of keeping up with the honesty of nonfiction, there are some memories in here from when I was very very small and I’m sure the happened a little differently than I remember. However, this piece is meant to be my truth so I’m keeping them as they are because that’s 100% true to me.

The air is stagnant and weighs heavily against my skin, suffocating and hot from the glare of the sun above. Just a year ago I could stand here without getting burnt, but now I’m acutely aware that I didn’t put on any sunscreen before I left the house. I breathe in dust because there is no longer any foliage to keep it on the ground. There is only red dirt and the dried, dead trunks of trees that were left behind by the loggers that came before me.

I feel like I’m standing in a cemetery. Each forgotten stump that rises from the earth is a tombstone marking how another tree died. The bleached white remnants of the old birch trees lay like bones on the earth, like corpses of the living things that have died. Tall dry plants rustle as I pass, filling the air with quiet whispers from the ghosts of the forest that once stood here. Now there’s nothing standing but me.

Close to 7 billion trees are cut down every year. I know the woods behind my house only make up a small fraction of that number, but they were my woods. And I think that’s what makes it even more devastating.

As a child, I hunted for salamanders in the stream now clogged by debris carelessly thrown by working hands. My oldest sister read me fairytales under the shelter of the trees while my other sister convinced me that she could talk to the animals that lived here. We tied a rope around a branch and taught each other what it felt like to fly by swinging over the water. It was where I learned to imagine worlds outside my own, but now it’s hardly a world at all.

I’ve read the reasons why people kill trees because all that destruction has to come with a cause. I know that forests are killed for timber, agricultural land, or human expansion, but what I want to know is why that’s more important than the needs of the woods.

Eight out of ten species that live on land call the forest their home. It’s where they find food, where they find mates, and where they grow old and die. The woods are everything to these animals. When those 7 billion trees disappear each year, so do some of these animals.

The woods behind my house would have been called a temperate deciduous forest and they had held hundreds of lives. Coyotes howled to our dogs through the night and foxes always threatened the chickens we raised. Deer would come visit in the morning until we walked out the door and they ran away. Rabbits loved to hide in the bushes and birds made homes above them. I wonder where they live now.

Now that there are no branches to hold their nests. Now that there is no more undergrowth to hide them. Now that there is no food grown for them to eat. Now that there is nothing.

The trees were a natural wall that protected our house from all kinds of different dangers. The strong winds of a storm couldn’t reach us without being slowed as they were sifted through the branches above us and no prying eyes were sharp enough to pierce through the defensive barrier of tree trunks blocking the way. My parents never had to worry that we might play too close to the road when we were children because the woods kept it too far away for us to try. Of course, that’s also the reason every friend that came to visit had to make up multiple jokes about how we lived in the middle of nowhere.

In truth we didn’t live all that far from our neighbors, but the woods around us made it feel that way. They replaced houses with tree trunks and backyards with gullies. Instead of overhearing other families, we listened to the birdsong that always filled the air.

Standing in the wasteland that is here now, I can only hear the haunted sigh of the dead leaves slowly moving back and forth. It’s too hot to shiver, but the desolation is frightening enough to demand it. My old fear of stepping on a snake feels somewhat foolish in comparison. In fact, it might be worth it to see that something is still alive here.

There is no answer to this wish. I am still alone on the sunbaked earth.

I can remember when there used to be shade that kept the skin on my arms from turning so pink. It left the ground cooler and the fallen leaves helped fertilize other plants into growing. The woods took care of itself and the people here too. Photosynthesis cleared the air of carbon dioxide to keep the climate stable. Storm water was naturally filtered here and didn’t threaten to erode the earth because the plants held the soil too tight.

Around the world, these same miracles take place in every forest. Trees are single-handedly combating global warming from taking over the planet. They’re also the ones keeping the water cycle pure enough for us to enjoy it. It’s through their biodiversity that the earth is filled with interesting plants and animals, including plants we need for medicinal purposes. Life as we know it stems from what the woods can give us.

For me, the woods gave me my childhood.

When I was little, my sisters and I had a plastic pink dollhouse that we loved playing with. The oldest, Erin, read a book about fairies and knew the house would be the perfect size for one. The other one, Rae, thought that meant they should take it to the fairies as a gift. I, being the youngest, agreed because I just wanted to be included in anything they did.

Without a whole lot of discussion, it was decided that we would walk our lovely dollhouse into the woods until we found the perfect spot for the fairies to find it. Somehow our only brother, Jacob, got roped into the mess as well and the four of us set out among the trees.

From what I remember, we spent what felt like hours hiking by the stream, taking turns holding the house so that some of us could scout ahead. Rae found a tree with a bulge that made it look like it was pregnant, so we very creatively named it the pregnant tree. Jacob picked up a stick and tapped it against the trunks that we passed. Erin gathered acorn caps that the fairies could use as plates in their new house. I was honestly just there.

By the time we had placed out dollhouse, we were all covered in dirt and water from trampling through the stream and stopping to play along the way. We promised each other that we would come back every day to see if anyone had moved in. In the past sixteen years, that promise has not been upheld once.

We never found out if we actually gave a gift to the fairies we were so certain existed or if we just lost a perfectly good dollhouse. However, we did end up finding something much cooler through the years. We found our own world made of trees and ferns and our own imaginations. It was completely for us because no one else ever bothered to come. There were no paths but the ones we formed from walking there so often and no entrance but the one we carved ourselves.

No matter what was going on in the outside world, we could always escape it in our woods. Even when it grew cold, it was our second home. In the fall, it turned the backyard beautiful as it collected the fallen leaves of red and yellow and brown. In the winter, empty branches still caught the snow and left the ground free for our travels. The trees even did what they could to block the chill of the wind so we could be comfortable under their shadows. Through rain or shine, our woods were the one safe place that we could share. Even when my siblings left for college, or marriage, or work overseas, I knew we still had our woods and the memories they made for us.

When the loggers first arrived on the land behind our house, I cried. It wasn’t our land and we couldn’t stop it, so we just had to watch out the window as the men outside cut down my memories one by one. My dad said the owner must’ve needed the money from the timber, but what they cut down was left where it fell. My mom decided they were going to start urbanizing our little rural town, but in the months that followed, nobody bothered to start construction. Even now, almost a year later, there’s still nothing being done to explain why this was done.

I guess they just came to clear the forest, but in the end, they built a graveyard instead.

This little paper helped me get an A in my class, so I hope you liked it as much as my TA did! If so, make sure to leave a like and comment if you’re as much of a tree-hugger as I am. Thanks for reading and please come back for next week’s post.

Until then, stay safe out there!