If a Tree Falls in the City
··· Jan 06 2011 · By ···
The philosophical question “If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around, does it make a sound?” has been riddling philosophers for years. It’s all about perception of an event. Of course this tree in a forest, well outside of an earshot, doesn’t make a sound. But that’s not why I am writing this.
If a tree falls in the city, or in this case is prematurely cut down and fed into the chipper, it makes a lot of noise. But it isn’t the noise that I am writing about either.
We lost a good friend today. A mature, healthy, Coast Live Oak that was the first thing we saw each morning as we opened our sleeping eyes.
This tree, which sat on the property line between our next door neighbor, and the next house down, was sent to the chipper because a couple branches were removed about 6 months earlier. This became a point of contention between our neighbor, who is renovating her new house, and her neighbor. The branches were removed to make room for upcoming renovation work on the house. That’s the background.
Well, because of the size of the branches that were removed, an arborist came out and noted that the tree would most likely die. I really don’t get that one, but it is basically what the tree genius said. I waited to see the tree turn brown, and start to lose leaves. That never happened (keep in mind that coast live oaks are evergreen, so they don’t shed their leaves annually). From my perspective the tree remained healthy, and not endangering any houses around it or anything else.
So this morning, Dorothy looked out the window and said “There’s someone up in the tree!”. Sure enough a guy was climbing all up in this magnificent tree, chainsaw in hand prepping it for its impending demise. KEEP IN MIND, THIS WAS A STILL HEALTHY MATURE TREE!
I quickly ran out with my phone to get some pictures and video of the tree in its final minutes. (it’s kind of noisy)
Just click on the video below.
What possibly angers me the most is the fact that this tree was still healthy, and a favorite perch for birds, squirrels, bugs, spiders, moss, lichen… It was also a very pretty tree, symmetrical, teeming with life, and serving as a screen to the urban hillside in the distance. So now I am forced to look at the homes dotting the hillside which were behind the canopy of the coast live oak.
So today Dorothy and I grieve at the loss of this friend of ours. We are sad that our bird and critter friends no longer have a place to perch, eat, squabble, play. We wish the tree good passage into it’s next life as it’s chipped up remains help nourish the soil where they are deposited.
