Perched atop a thin eucalyptus branch with surprising grace, looking perky as a cockatoo and with the audacious moniker of “Petal”, he deftly prunes. In another nearby tree his forest activist workmate Nishe mimics.
They “earn” money by protecting homes such as mine from overhanging branches that in high winds could fall, or, in bush fires drop embers hot and dangerous upon the roof.
They “spend money” by purchasing expensive gear and then climbing the world’s tallest eucalyptus trees in Tasmania’s old growth forests and perch themselves up some 50 meters or higher and wait patiently for days at a time, sometimes weeks, until the police with frustration eventually meet with them in their aerial homes and a momentary truce is signed.
Their tree guerilla actions buys time for the trees, but it can only slow down the inevitable logging before the machinery of a corrupt government enters and destroys,
From up high in the Weld or Florentine valley trees, Nishe and Petal bear witness to two things.
First, is the ongoing destruction of ancient eco-systems, tens of thousands of years old. Painful, this brings them an unbearable saddness.
Second, though, equally emotional and more precious, is that they appreciate how especially privileged they are to be able to witness, from their high altitude perspective, a rare “human” glimpse of the verdant forest of trees and wildlife below and around them. Now, this is truly eagle awesome.
Over food, whiskey and wine at my home for three days of compassionate, artful tree pruning and tree climbing explorations around the area, they shared many stories of experienced grief and of much delight.
In the following poem about the life of trees, substitute eucalyptus trees for pine trees, and, where it reads “They fear nothing but the Hurricane, and Fire,” add chain saw. And yes, I’m very much aware of the irony of what I have done to my eucalyptus trees to what the loggers do, but pruning is not the same as clear felling.
The Life of Trees
The pines rub their great noise
into the spangled dark, scratch
their itchy boughs against the house,
and that moan’s mystery translates roughly
into the drudgery of ownership: time
to drag the ladder from the shed,
climb onto the roof with a saw
between my teeth, cut
those suckers down. What’s reality
if not a long exhaustive cringe
from the blade, the teeth? I want to sleep
and dream the life of trees, beings
from the muted world who care
nothing for Money, Politics, Power,
Will or Right, who want little from the night
but a few dead stars going dim, a white owl
lifting from their limbs, who want only
to sink their roots into the wet ground
and terrify the worms or shake
their bleary heads like fashion models
or old hippies. If trees could speak
they wouldn’t, only hum some low
green note, roll their pinecones
down the empty streets and blame it,
with a shrug, on the cold wind.
During the day they sleep inside
their furry bark, clouds shredding
like ancient lace above their crowns.
Sun. Rain. Snow. Wind. They fear
nothing but the Hurricane, and Fire,
that whipped bully who rises up
and becomes his own dead father.
In the storms the young ones
bend and bend and the old know
they may not make it, go down
with the power lines sparking,
broken at the trunk. They fling
their branches, forked sacrifice
to the beaten earth. They do not pray.
If they make a sound it’s eaten
by the wind. And though the stars
return they do not offer thanks, only
ooze a thicker sap from their roundish
concentric wounds, clap the water
from their needles, straighten their spines
and breathe, and breathe again.Dorianne Laux
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