chunks of trunk
lay in the yard
waiting for chainsaws
I live in a town that was once a forest.
Tall, old trees are taken for granted as part of the community.
Until they fall.
One day in December a hundred-year-old black oak tree in our front yard fell over. It took with it two adolescent cypress trees and the wire that supplied electricity to two houses. Instantly this created half a day's work for several public employees, and a now-sunny front yard which had only moments before been shade-filled and had given us privacy. After basic cleanup, we inspected the roots and found a rotten core, black and squishy. This in a tree that had shown no signs of disease or stress, a tree that presented itself to the sky as strong, healthy, and dominant.
On the outside, everything was fine.
It was the rotten core that did it in.
Seems to me there's some kind of lesson there.
