We said goodbye to one of our beloved old oak trees on the second day of the new year. This tree shaded our children’s playroom and offered a place for the crows to gather for their weekly meetings. It provided food storage for the red capped woodpeckers. Better the tree than our house, I often thought when I saw them pecking the sides of the tree with their beaks, eager to put up their acorns for winter. This tree was tall and thin. It arched towards the sun and our home, appearing that it might fall over if it got too top heavy. It was perfectly imperfect. It was ours to take care of. It was alive.
I didn’t fully realize how much the tree was part of our family. Living a couple of feet from our deck, we connected with it daily. It shaped how the light fell into the rooms in the back of the house. It brought joy to our lives. My family and I experienced so much life through the tree and because of the tree. It served as a frequent reminder of why we left the city, to live with the trees, to tend to them, to know them, and to deeply know ourselves.
In the spring of 2023, our town experienced a record-breaking blizzard. We live at 3,000 ft elevation and usually get a few inches of snow at the most. During the blizzard we had nearly a foot, which was fun for our kids and their new sleds, but devastating for many of our old oak trees whose branches aren’t meant to withstand that amount of weight from snowpack. Unfortunately, this particular tree had too many “hangers”, or limbs that snapped from the snow, but were left hanging as they didn’t fully break off. The hangers are dangerous as they can fall at any time and with snow season around the corner, we had to have an arborist remove them this week.
During the removal process it became clear that this tree wasn’t doing well. It had a large open cavity at its base that was full of water. It was also leaning right over the kid’s playroom and could easily crush that part of our home if we got another large snow fall. Could we take a chance, hoping that we don’t get a heavy snow causing the tree to fall on our house taking out half our deck and the kids playroom? Sure, but we were not willing to take that risk. As tough as it was to have the tree removed, we knew we had to protect our house and our family.
Change comes at a cost. The choice to do our best to keep our house and family safe meant the tree must die. I can justify having it removed for all the reasons I have shared, and it is giving me an opportunity to look deeper, to look under my reasons to feel the grief that is present in this choice. When we talk about change, we often don’t look at the loss and grief that are part of the change making process. We rarely consider the reality that for something to live, something else must die. Just being alive in this moment has caused the death of so much. This is part of the exchange we have with living. With taking our next breath. With eating our next meal. With leaving a relationship, putting gas in our cars, saying goodbye to a loved one, ordering things from the internet, the list goes on. Change comes at a cost. I am finding it important to take inventory of that cost and mourn the losses along the way.
The day the tree was removed created a somber energy in the house. Our oldest son Sol expressed sadness about the missing tree. Each of us felt the absence of its presence in our own ways. If you asked me years ago while living in Los Angeles if I would miss a tree, I honestly don’t know if I would have noticed. Or if I did, I have difficulty imagining it would have this kind of impact on me. On this day though, January 2, 2024, the loss was felt. The sound of each limb dropping to the ground made my heart sank. When the final section of the trunk came down with a house shaking thud, I shuddered. Immediately I felt guilty. What have we done, what have we done, what have we done. When I was able to gather my courage and look out the window to see the huge space where our tree had stood just hours before, my body ached. Before I had a moment to spiral into remorse, our two-year-old woke up from his nap and my attention was redirected to making his lunch.
Change makes way for something new. That night while putting our kids to bed I was in awe by the number of stars that were now visible in the clear night sky, stars that were often blocked out by the swaying branches of our old oak tree. It took me a few minutes, but once I settled into this new way of seeing the night sky, I couldn’t help but feel a small measure of amazement. One of the reasons I love living in the foothills is because there isn’t any light pollution. At our elevation, just a few hundred feet below the peak of our ridge, you can feel how vast the night sky is. You can feel how tiny you are in this expansive world, much more than you can catching a sliver of the sky in a city or a crowded suburb. Out here you can scan the sky for extended periods undisturbed and if you’re lucky, catch sight of shooting stars and roving satellites way out there in space.
After staring at the stars for a while I noticed the grief from our missing tree resurfacing. In the moments that followed I held both the wonder of this new view of the night sky and the sorrow of taking out a tree that meant so much to our family. It seems that life often shows up like this, in a series of interconnected moments that bring such contrasting emotions to the surface. I wonder what I have yet to learn about holding the tension between loss and newness. I am curious how this experience will shape my year, offering me reminders that so much will change, so much grief will be felt, and so much that is unknown lives right alongside all of it.
With deep gratitude,
Ashley
Beautiful post, Ashley. Also living in the foothills, I understand your love of the trees. I have four beloved oaks on our property, any one of which would create a powerful sorrow were we to lose them. I appreciate hearing about the stars. I will keep that in mind. 💜
It took me a long time to learn change is the end result of all true learning. Change involves three things: First, a dissatisfaction with self - a felt void or need; second, a decision to change to fill the void or need; and third, a conscious dedication to the process of growth and change - the wilful act of making the change, doing something.