The Pines
This is a first public posting of Meg’s “The Pines” written in 2020.
The Pines
My house is across the street from a wooded lot- somewhere between half to a whole acre. Actually, I’m from Baltimore City- I don’t know what an acre looks like. but there’s a wooded lot, or rather, there was a wooded lot across the street from us. This community was built before there were regulations on drainage areas, but the Levitt builders knew enough to set aside a lot or two in every neighborhood as a catchment area for runoff. I just happen to be across from one of those. After 60 years, the area has become wild and wooded- its own little oasis of nature in truth: tall pine trees line the lot, 4-5 stories high. These majestic gentlemen cover our cars in yellow pollen in the spring and throughout the winter we hear the eerie echo of their branches breaking in ice storms like gunshots. They are tall and dark and brooding and beautiful. They are the proud guards of this wild, green oasis, housing squirrel nests two hundred feet off the ground. And birds. So many birds. There is an operatic serenade outside of our open windows just before dawn because there are so many damn birds. The trees surround a small aquatic area and at night we hear a symphony of tree frogs trilling and the deep belches of bullfrogs. Wild honeysuckle grows on the fence that surrounds the lot and this is where i taught the boys how the pluck off the light green ends of the flowers and pull the stamen through the petals to suck out the nectar.
These old pines were planted decades ago and left to exist on their own. Inside our planned suburban community where the street gets repaved and the strip mall down the street replaces its awnings, this half acre of nature lives in its own sphere. Vines strangle saplings. A squirrel falls to its death on a misjudged leap. A frog survives a deep freeze buried sound in the mud. Year after year. 1000 nature comedies and dramas behind that wall of pines and we never know the full extent of them.
Last summer we noticed signs posted outside of the lot. The county would be bulldozing the area to create a runoff catchment area that is up to code with the new watershed-related policies. The 60 year old pine trees would be removed. Everything…everything would be torn out. They set a timeline to start last fall, wrapping each pine trunk in a corset of neon orange tape. Then nothing happened. Maybe they forgot, we hoped. I gave the tree tape the side eye every time I passed by. Maybe they marked you as the trees they will save.
But this spring, as we’ve been locked down in our homes, we heard the first rumble of the trucks. Just as our connection to the outside world was severed, our outside world was…severed. From the root. From the trunk. It all came down.
The construction workers started the destruction inside the lot, working their way out, to my pines. Bulldozers and diggers disappeared into the thicket down a manmade slope of gravel. We’d hear trees fall, feel the shake of their heavy trunks hitting the ground, their roots turned upright, leaving pock marks in the earth. The dense green canopy outside of my bedroom window began to have pin pricks of light, then big showy patches of sun. Our tall, beautiful pines, lining the edge of the lot were the last to go. With each tiny earthquake from the lot, another refugee appeared in our back yard. A family of rabbits. Squirrels. Chipmunks. By lunchtime each day my bird feeders are empty. “You can live here if you like.” I tell them. “Just keep out of the vegetable garden.” They oblige, with the exception of the moles, those little fuckers.
At first I gave the construction workers dirty looks to express my displeasure with their mass destruction. But these guys are just doing their job and the destruction will happen regardless of my feelings about it. There are some inarguable, unalterable forces. Among them: men with heavy machinery and deadly airborne viruses. With the constant change of the world in crisis from the COVID pandemic, i began to focus on the destruction of our lot as an exercise in embracing change, embracing the constant destruction and evolution of our surroundings. “Nothing is permanent,” i would whisper, watching the trees fall. Watching the store shelves empty. Watching the headlines. Nothing stays the same. That’s the way of the world.“I am embracing impermanence!” I announce to Matt, when we walk by the lot-now-ditch. No more dirty looks at the construction workers.
They’re out there now, where the lot is a pit of brown and gold mud, 20 feet deep. The machines are noisy and they give the house a constant vibration, sometimes with larger thumps that makes the mirror on the wall rattle. I make a note to have the bricks on the chimney examined when they’re done. Change is inevitable, i remind myself in a grumble. It doesn’t have to be pleasant.
From my bed, on the second story, the tops of the pines were the first thing I’d see in the morning. With them gone, I notice a lush green tree just to the left of her late pine brothers. The undersides of her leaves quiver when the wind blows- almost a flirtation. Clearly this tree wasn’t there before? But it must have been: it’s taller than the house, after all. Why did I never see this lush, green beauty? Has she been waving at me this whole time? Have I been missing the tree for the forest, or the forest for the tree? Or have I seriously just lived here for 14 years and not noticed the crab apple next door? No matter. I see her now.
Beyond her, on the horizon- so much bigger now- I see another unfamiliar tree, far off in the distance. In fact, I see the sun set now out of this window. I’m not saying I prefer the sunset to my pines, but I can appreciate the colors, the clouds. I get to know a new landscape.
Meanwhile, my son is tickled to see the new squirrels chase each other through our gardens, the way the chipmunks greedily pack their cheeks with bird seed. I allow them to distract him. From homeschool. From the distance and the change. From the two dimensional friends on zoom calls. Nothing is permanent, I tell those cute chipmunk cheeks. Nothing is permanent, I think as the kids sign on to another day of learning through YouTube.
This new now is here and I have mixed feelings about it. The pines won’t be coming back, but the squirrels seem to have moved on and I dig their resiliency. They’re embracing impermanence, just a little more gracefully than the rest of us.
