NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
The last of the centenarians, in that row along lower Wicket Street, hit the ground after the chain saw stopped belching sawdust, sputtered, and calmed to purring internal combustion.
“You can feel all hundred years shaking the ground.”
“There must be enough wood there to build the new house!”
“I know, look at the size of those other logs!”
“That big one must be three or four feet in diameter.”
“Represents more than one hundred years, surely.”
“I noticed the orange Dordrecht backhoe parked here, all week.”
“It has been two weeks!”
“Did you enjoy the noise?”
“Oh yes, a symphony for steel, concrete, timber, and the resonance of an empty truck bed.”
“You have an artist’s ears!”
“My ears are ringing with disgust at this destruction!”
“Was that last one a pin oak or willow oak?”
“A willow oak.”
Bel’s braids are gathered in a colorful striped snood. She picks up a handful of last year’s dried leaves in her suede glove. They had blown into the dead weeds along the ditch.
“See these, long and thin like a willow.”
“There will be no more of those blowing across the street into you gutters!”
“Nothing from the southern red either, or the post oak.”
“They are all logs now.”
We stand in the road opposite her house. Looking at the uniform imprint of the backhoe’s tracks across a flat expanse of newly exposed clay. The men in yellow hard hats load up their trucks with equipment and drive away. Leaving a pile of concrete chunks, which was once the foundational slab, is ready to load. The house at 34 Wicket Street and surrounding mature trees and shrubs, is now rubble, brush, and logs, sorted into three piles. A large puddle has formed close by, with a little ice at the edge.
“Who lived here?”
Bel tosses the dead leaves, still in her hand.
“That house was rented. Has been ever since I can remember.”
“It always looked vacant to me, walking past.”
“It was vacant a lot of the time. The owner lives out of state.”
“This new thing is going to be the first mountain of a range that will turn our place into a canyon bottom.”
“I haven’t noticed other properties on sale around you?”
“Haven’t you heard? There is talk of selling Fauxmont Park!”
“I suppose it would fetch half a million.”
“Easily, at the moment anyway. When you think a half-acre lot fetches over three hundred K.”
“While the easy money flows!”
“And it is flowing around here. It is flooding!”
“There’s going to be a lot of runoff from all that new roofing and paved driveway.”
“Runoff! Yeah, sometimes I feel like running away.”
“I know the feeling.”
“We are growing more and more out of touch with nature.”
“Is it growth or decay?”
“Well, it is a trend, I guess, to live more and more in our electronic environment.”
“Trapped in the small screen which fascinates attention.”
“LOOK!”
“That fox seems pretty casual standing there, looking at us.”
“Seen from the side, like this, they often look as if they are about to laugh.”
“It’s the jaunty curve of the mouth.”
“Healthy too, that’s a tail to be proud of.”
“He cleared the silt fence with ease.”
The fox runs behind the brush pile.
“If they sell the park he is going to be looking to move too.”
”Maybe not, wildlife isn’t as wild as it used to be!”
“Who is talking about selling the park?”
“Dick East and his cronies now running the Fauxmont Guild.”
“What?”
“Yes, didn’t you vote against them, last time?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Fred, why aren’t you paying attention?”
“Hard to say, there is no excuse, really.”
“Well, you said it.”
“So, what happened?”
“Dick East now has a majority on the Fauxmont Guild, and he is pressing for more development around here.”
“We moved here to get away from that!”
“So did we.”
“Right, no sidewalks, no lawns no streetlights.”
“and azaleas instead of fences.”
“and, no traffic!”
“Well, now we are getting it all!”
“This is the meaning of development!”
“Yes, they build what sells and customers want spacious houses.”
“I know, with generic shrubs and mulch.”
“Trees are seen as a danger. Their branches fall in storms, the leaves mess up the yard and they sometimes fall themselves, blocking roads and destroying roofs.”
“They also provide shade, that reduces utility bills! How’s that for value?”
“Not a good trade-off for those who can afford houses at over a million dollars.”
“Yes, Dick reminded me that development creates value.”
“Higher valuations mean higher taxes.”
“That’s why he is a Republican.”
“Aha, tax reduction is their mantra.”
”and small government.”
“The question on my mind is, what does value mean?”
“Money, money, money!”
“There are a lot of other values, you know.”
“Are you thinking of the biosphere?”
“I am.”
“The term has been politicized. We are in danger of being called, un-American or something.”
“That is how facts are turned into distracting controversies.”
“Distraction is the name of the game, alright.”
“Our media are entertaining us. Full of interesting personalities, you know, celebrities.”
“What is more interesting, an embarrassing gaffe, or a policy statement?”
“Good question!”
”That’ entertainment!”
“So, anyway, I was talking about mycorrhizal activity in the ground, not entertaining at all.”
“Interesting though and pretty obscure, in fact.”
“Also, above ground, oxygen and nitrogen, insects and birds, and their connections, and so on.”
“Well, those are called externalities by industry!”
“Only by those who miss the ‘sphere’ in biosphere!”
“Micro what, was that, by the way?”
“Mycorrhizal fungi, the fungi feed on sugar provided by tree roots and roots feed on minerals processed by the fungi.”
“It’s like a contract!”
“Yeah, it was written over millions of years of evolution, called symbiosis.”
“Are you saying that trees are in an affair with fungus?”
“Not sexual, more like digestive! Check out, Suzanne Simard’s book, Finding Mother Tree.”
”Did she find it?”
“She found a lot more than that.”
“Like what?”
“Resistance! to women working in a male profession and resistance to new information about the importance of microcrystal action in tree growth.”
“I hope it isn’t another feminist tract!”
“Far from it!”
“Autobiography then.”
“It is in part, but her discoveries and insights are most important, and the science is presented in a way I can understand.”
“Well, a gut check reveals bacteria in there are doing something similar.”
“Aren’t we all symbiotic systems?”
“As things are, that might be all we have in common!”
We turn and walk up Oval Street hill, past Diddlie’s, across Bails Lane, and into Fauxmont Park.
“There goes the fox.”
“Yup, what’s that in its mouth?”
“Is it the same one? Can’t tell from here.”
“Doesn’t Dick East own a construction company or something?”
Bel kicks a large twig out of the way.
“I don’t know about that, but he and Westard North have a lot of influential contacts.”
“Westard North? I don’t know him.”
“He is a lobbyist in Richmond, among other things.”
“So, he doesn’t live here.”
“He does. He is on the water committee and moved into that big place on Derwent Sloot’s old lot.”
“That doesn’t sound good either.”
“No, he wants to shut our system down and go on county water.”
We go off the road down the path into the park. A lot of sparrows are sounding off in a sunny bamboo thicket.
“Why?”
“Well, one reason is to build more houses per lot.”
“Oh?”
“Fred, you are out of the loop again. Our well water system can only support one house per lot.”
“How about that! Not only do we have the benefit of good drinking water. We have beneficial zoning too!”
“Yeah, beneficial to some and not to others.”
“Strikes me, the planet benefits!”
“I would like to think so.”
I stumble on a protruding sycamore root and stagger off the path.
“Easy there, Fred! You are off track!”
“Yes, looking up at that broken branch, see?”
“Looks like it could come down any time.”
A red-tailed hawk glides through the intervening limbs and lands above our heads.
“Well, I am glad that bird avoided the loose branch.”
“Yeah, I can’t tell what is keeping it up there.”
Bel takes off her sunglasses to see more clearly.
“Precarious.”
“It might have crushed us!”
“What do you think the hawk is eating?”
“An elastic squirrel, I would say. Look at those strings stretching from the beak.”
It pauses and looks around, adjusting its grip on the meat. It is in no hurry and appears to be finished when we see it pull another stringy portion off its catch. Three crows can be heard sounding their alarm, in surrounding trees. Now a fourth has joined them.
