Green Retirement

I don’t know exactly when it started, or even where it started, but I can see dead trees.  Wherever I go, I see the rain forests, jungles, redwoods that once existed.  Where people see cows grazing on beautiful rolling green covered hills - I see dead trees.

Long after the forests and those who remember them have died, after the traces of their existence have disappeared, after all the wild has been squezzed out of the wilderness, I can see the forests that once were there.  I can look at a city with it’s hills covered in concrete, and I can see the trees that once lined the hills, and where the creeks once ran.  When I see someone’s backyard redwood deck - I see a dead tree.

Sugar cane fields in Hawaii, sugar cane fields in Brazil, sugar cane fields in Costa Rica - dead trees.  A ski-resort in Tahoe - dead trees.  It’s a curse.  Something I can’t shake.  Wherever I go I see dead trees.  I hate chain-saws.  I can’t believe their is a program on t.v. that celebrates men who kill trees.  I don’t understand what is so brave and macho about killing something that can’t move.

I know that people think that people who sit in trees to save them from getting chopped down, and after reading this article you may think I belong in a tree with them, are out to lunch crazy.   But have you ever stood under a tree that was born before Christ, that sheltered the first American explorers of the West, that survived thousands of fires and droughts, that existed when your ancestors still lived in caves - I have.