Another Tree Chopped Down

They're coming to cut down the large Spruce Pine tree this morning.

For fear of another severe season of storms which might cause this magnificent tree
(now so impossibly over-sized and listing towards a neighbor's property) to catastrophically collapse, it'd been decided.

Last night, I couldn't deny what I was feeling, and it sank deep within my soul.
All I could do for the grief was a personal ritual of 'farewell' to this towering presence, this living-friend from Nature whom I'd called through all these years 'Papa-san Tree',
representing that noble Eastern corner in our back-yard feng-shui.

I went out in the quiet and stillness of the late night, with a small token-cup for collecting the sap, and said a prayer, touched the oozing bark. I proceeded to scrape a little of the sparkling viscousness.

As the lamp light caught the motion, I watched the small insects and unknown creatures continue their business up and down the crevices of the trunk. The light, as it has for years, also caught the lines of branches and needles, giving me that last sense of an illusion of a Northern camping ground, away from the city, in the quiet of a wilderness site.

Suddenly, some pesky bugs brushed over my exposed scalp. I waved furiously them down to the ground, not being sure whether they were just mosquitoes or actually some gross-looking centipede or something that had fallen because of the light.
But, because of this, as I was forced to look to the ground to see what I might have shaken down, I spotted a small shiny stone. I recognized it immediately and grabbed it. It was a small hematite stone, beautiful and polished as I'd placed it there so many years ago in that previous act of devotion! I retrieved it, then held it tight with a combination of wonder and gratitude and finally placed it in the small receptacle filled with the sweet-smelling syrup. I'd forgotten the small stone, and now, it was being given back to me. Now, as I write this, it seems almost too coincidental that I would have been able in the darkness looked and retrieved this stone, which had also been caught in the sticky droppings from the tree, that the bugs would cause me to stop and look, see it, and then grasp it. I can't help but feel it as another 'personal communication' between us, me and the tree, it saying 'farewell' to me too. "Here, I want you to have this."

Slapping the trunk three times three, wordless save for these heart-cries, it was 'good-bye'.
I walked away a few yards, and then turning back to gaze one last time at the huge shadow commanding the night sky. A Full Moon was just rising beyond, through its branches.

"It'll be gone, like so many.
There may come others from its seed.
But, how easy it is to think this such a casual act, cutting down one tree in the city.
How simple a thing to decide to dispense with this or that thing which at the current moment appears inconvenient.
How quickly to let go of the living things around.
How much for granted is taken of the multitude and multiplicity of living things.
And, once taken,
down, and cut-off,
cannot be replaced or put back,
but gone forever."

It remained in silence.

I walked back into the house.

Went to bed.