If a tree falls outside my office, do I hear it?

You bet your ass I do.  Loud and clear.  Especially if the tree falls with the "help" of a giant scoop loader.

It's true.  They killed my little tree with the same scoop loader they used to rip up the road next to it.  Like some malevolent mechanical giraffe, rending it limb from limb.

my_tree
my_tree

I refer to it as my tree because no one else really cares about it.  Plenty of people have expressed sadness that the tree was killed, but nobody loved that tree the way I did.  It stood right outside my window and every day I admired it--how it was tall and elegant and framed my beautiful view.   The people who made the decision to kill it probably looked at it a handful of times, and it never occurred to them that someone might care.

dismemberment
dismemberment

The lesson in all of this is not a happy one.  The things you care about?  No one loves them the way you do.  The same goes for the people you love.  After you're dead, no one will ever love them the way you did.  That will be gone forever.  And the people who love you?  After they're dead, no one's going to love you the way they did.  Everything and everyone is transient.  You're going to lose them.  They're going to lose you.  It's hard to remember that.  People invented religion so they wouldn't have to accept that, but you need to.  It's good for you to look at the people and things around you and remember that you're going to lose them.


Ahab
Ahab
1 comment
On a bitter and amusing side note: the guy who ran the scoop loader all day had a hook for his right hand.  He did an admirable job running the scoop and seemed extremely skilled, which is good, since he was operating right outside my office window, from where these photos were taken.  His skill, aside, though, he was manipulating the scoop WITH A HOOK!!  As Spucko pointed out: "I hope he learned from that first mistake."

Hubbicula and I agreed that he'd probably lost his hand to some very voracious man-eating tree.  Now he spends his days as an itinerant scoop loader operator, seeking revenge on all of tree-kind.


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Lalla
It makes me so sad when trees are cut down. Unfortunately it happens a lot in my town as well as they's building millions of underground parkings (so more cars can circulate into town - like we have not enough of those...) and the poor trees are sacrified. Too bad. They say they will plant more after the building is finished but it won't be the same. It's difficult to survive in this town for young trees plus it will take years for the new ones to grow as much as the poor old ones that have been cut.
YGRS
oh --- I'm so sorry, Redz. This is really a sad post. --- And I completely understand what you're talking about and how you felt about the tree. I also have feelings for things that some people call "inanimate objects". I've had some really special trees in my life too. They are sharing the world with us and if you allow them, they have something to share with us. Some people only look at them though like they are an object in the way of something else and they need to be removed. (dismembered-destroyed.) Some people call it progress.
I'm sorry your tree was destroyed like this.
That sucks.
I'm also keenly aware of the point you mentioned about everything is all transient. Everything - everyone - will be gone.
I'm really sorry.
crankypants
This makes me really sad. At least though it is for a handicap ramp/entrance, that's the only good thing, but still. Poor stumpy.
lostdwarf
[this is good]
Such a sweet post that ends with hilarity. HA!
Toe-Knee
Huh... scoop loader. I work around those things a lot and no one up here calls them that. It makes me think of some sort of mechanical ice cream dispenser or something.... up here we call them Hoe's. Backhoe, or Trackhoe... or big hoe or dirty hoe. Sometimes it's even an old hoe.

Yeah yeah... lame joke.

I like what you said about no one caring about things the way you do. Ever since I was a little kid I've considered myself the center of the universe. I know this speaks volumes about my ego, but to me I am. The things that effect me are the most important to me, and they don't effect anyone else the same. I think it's important for people to be the center of their own universe... at least sometimes.
brownamazon
LOL, yeah, I had never heard this referred to as a scoop loader, either. We call them backhoes too. And LMAO at the one-armed pirate operator!

It's always sad to lose a beautiful tree. We have an ancient, huge maple in front of our house that may need to be cut down this summer. It's simply dying of old age. Many of the bigger branches are already dead, and it's putting our house at risk. Not to mention the power lines.
Redzilla
Yeah, now when a tree is sick and endangering people, I consider that a mercy killing. I'm just angry that this tree was sacrificed for convenience. Since they ripped out the sidewalk on the far side of the road, they could have easily run the new sidewalk on the other side of the tree, but that would have narrowed the road by a whole foot. Oh noes! So the access road would have been a foot narrower. Bastards.
AmyH

RIP, little ripped up tree.

It's awful to see healthy trees ripped up in the prime of their lives. Phoenix does this far too often, and then the plans change or stop, so we're left with barren patches of nothing for years until someone else has a not-so-grand idea for that piece of property.

Redzilla
It's hard for me to accept. I grew up in the fairly treeless terrain of southwest Kansas, so to me every tree is inherently valuable and rare. Hard to believe not everyone sees it that way.
Lurkertype
Hook and the backhoe. (which is what I've always heard them called)

Farewell, RedZ tree.
Valerae
I know you're not a fan, but in Tolkien's book of letters the few that still stick out in my mind were in regard to a neighbor's tree that had been cut down. He was outraged by the loss... It is always sad to lose a tree and I think that you and Tolkien have done a bang up job of expressing in words the way it makes me feel in my stomach and heart. :-( So long Shady Friend.
Redzilla
Yeah...I think this is a sign that I'm meant to speak German or that my ancestors spent too much time around Germans--lots of them in my part of Kansas. The ruling theory about nouns in southwest Kansas seems to be: well, what does the thing do? It scoops and loads? Well, then we'll call it a scoop loader.
Jenn F.
My heart breaks for the little tree. But the fact that you titled that picture Ahab nearly made me pee my pants in laughter.
lauowolf
They always do this kind of crap with taking out trees on campuses in the summer.
One of my dearest, though most painful, memories from working in the Anthro office on campus was the day Professor Washburn (about five feet tall, and maybe 100 pounds soaking wet, and already older than the hills) was out trying to face down the workmen felling trees outside his office.
I think the cops finally took him away.
Because, you know, there's nothing the matter with humiliating a world-class academic to further the interests of some petty bureaucratic asshat in physical plant.
I mean, what's a university all about, anyway?
And they got to knock down some hundred year-old coast oaks while they were at it.
And don't get me started on all this: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/19/MNH111BB50.DTL
My all time favorite, though, is the hunk of woodland near the grad student housing they just bulldozed, with a sign reading "Meadow Restoration."
I'll be watching that prime real estate corner turn into a meadow.
Sure.

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