Yesterday, ME and I are walking through campus, when she turns to me. “There’s something missing.â€
I look around, and see it too. The campus seems emptier. Less airy. “Trees. They cut down the trees.â€
Between the Library and the Business Building there are raised brick planters, perhaps three and a half feet tall. There were trees in them last week before break, but now they’ve been cut down to the planter, nearly covered with ground plants to the point that it’s hard to see the stumps unless you’re looking for them.
I take a deep breath. “Doesn’t it feel like there is less oxygen to you?â€
She laughs. It’s a odd thought—that someone could feel the thinning of the air as trees slowly start to disappear from around them.
But the cut-down of the trees cuts me. It’s like a senseless murder that makes the world a victim, but no one steps forward and acknowledges it.
I miss those trees already.
After all, they were the only things masking the scent of the chlorine-corn chip smell between the buildings. Perhaps my newly-stuffed up nose isn’t such a bad acquisition after all.
There is always some reason for this – some stuffy, reasonable motivation for doing these things. The trees were ill, they blocked the sun, they were dangerous for traffic… whatever.
But when that void is there, I can well imagine how it feels wrong somehow. And you hope that there will be others that do survive, because trees aren’t just healthy and pretty, they remind us where we come from, older things that go beyond college and career and the modern lives we want to create for ourselves.
Mm, sorry, got a bit carried away there. I’m just sorry they cut them down. It’s a pity.