As I watched, the backhoe reached up into the bare crown of the sycamore, hooked a branch and pulled backward. With a tear, the limb came free and fell down on lower ones. The squirrel's nest on the highest twigs shook back and forth.
Is this any way to take down a tree?
Another thrust into the assemblage of branches, a combined tug-twist movement and another branch rips off. 'Why do you break me?' asked by the tree containing the soul of a suicide of Dante, who had injured it. My sycamore, no spirit, simply a squatter at the corner of a lot that had until a month ago contained a house, submitted mutely; the only sound was the clanking of the metal tracks as the backhoe maneuvered to get a better grip.
Now, all branches off, the bucket snagged the top of the bole itself and pulls backward, back and back, as the trunk bent more and more until it splintered and snapped.
Perhaps the thinking was: why use a chainsaw when the backhoe is already on site. A building has been torn down there, why not a tree? Cheap and convenient.
Further on in my run, I came across professional tree trimmers on the Esplanade. A bucket truck, workers with googles and gauntlets, neatly sliced branch stumps, a pile of lopped limbs on the ground. The whole grove seemed airier, able to breath easier, disburdened as it was.
I briefly chatted with one tree worker about the ugly scene I'd witnessed in Charlestown just a few moments before. 'This is the better way,' she said, as I nodded.
But trees, how would you want us to treat you? I know, left to grow, age and die naturally. In a forest, the other trees compete with you for space to do the same. If you have to be taken down, what would you rather: to be brutally shredded or surgically sliced? Perhaps the second option seems better to me because more orderly, less violent. Would I rather be attacked on the street or disinvested by legal provisions?
Still, it was shocking to see you treated so disrespectfully. Flattened, battered road kill made the mistake of wandering into traffic and now thump under our tires as we pass, unable to stop. Your mistake was to grow in a place someone has another use for, but who can take time to take you down in somewhat as neat a fashion as you grew. My apologies for us.
Is this any way to take down a tree?
Another thrust into the assemblage of branches, a combined tug-twist movement and another branch rips off. 'Why do you break me?' asked by the tree containing the soul of a suicide of Dante, who had injured it. My sycamore, no spirit, simply a squatter at the corner of a lot that had until a month ago contained a house, submitted mutely; the only sound was the clanking of the metal tracks as the backhoe maneuvered to get a better grip.
Now, all branches off, the bucket snagged the top of the bole itself and pulls backward, back and back, as the trunk bent more and more until it splintered and snapped.
Perhaps the thinking was: why use a chainsaw when the backhoe is already on site. A building has been torn down there, why not a tree? Cheap and convenient.
Further on in my run, I came across professional tree trimmers on the Esplanade. A bucket truck, workers with googles and gauntlets, neatly sliced branch stumps, a pile of lopped limbs on the ground. The whole grove seemed airier, able to breath easier, disburdened as it was.
I briefly chatted with one tree worker about the ugly scene I'd witnessed in Charlestown just a few moments before. 'This is the better way,' she said, as I nodded.
But trees, how would you want us to treat you? I know, left to grow, age and die naturally. In a forest, the other trees compete with you for space to do the same. If you have to be taken down, what would you rather: to be brutally shredded or surgically sliced? Perhaps the second option seems better to me because more orderly, less violent. Would I rather be attacked on the street or disinvested by legal provisions?
Still, it was shocking to see you treated so disrespectfully. Flattened, battered road kill made the mistake of wandering into traffic and now thump under our tires as we pass, unable to stop. Your mistake was to grow in a place someone has another use for, but who can take time to take you down in somewhat as neat a fashion as you grew. My apologies for us.
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