please don't die

INTERLUDE, THE WOODS

I've often felt the woods to be a source of an amalgamation of complex emotions I feel for the environment. One of my most memorable experiences in the woods comes from when I was a sixth grader at a school in D-----e, Iowa. Behind our school lay a massive forest and every time I peered out the science room at the back of the building, it seemed the forest went on for eternity. One day during lunch break I left the school grounds and stepped into the forest (...) I remember looking up at trees with green leaves flecked with sunlight and coarse brown bark standing like tall sentinels. There was a small brook that I chanced upon as I followed the worn path, marveling at the quiet peacefulness that had enveloped me, so vastly different from the harried and loud world of people with needs and demands (...) the serenity I felt in this microcosm was not just inclusiveness of the five senses; inside of me, the nervous energy of thoughts on school and friends and pressing deadlines, the irritated and rational urges of utilitarian thinking, had suddenly vanished.

Here in C------o, California I feel love for the woods wash over me daily. My house is located near the edge of the town near the mountains, and there are semblances of a calming wilderness in my backyard. The irony of this juxtaposition of commercial with natural is not lost on me; in building my house, unfettered forestry had to be destroyed (...) trees had to be razed to their knees and birds were banished in droves from their bleeding habitats. I visited my old school in Iowa last summer and saw an entire forest brought down earth, all the beauty and tranquil air that the woods would exhale now being consumed to the point of depletion by the hundred students attending their classes in the new building.

The history of where they stand is lost on them, much like my inability to understand the long gone nature of where my home now stands. But I believe there is yet hope; I believe it when I hear squirrels running on my roof, when I see birds rooting for worms in my backyard from the kitchen window, when I step outside and look up at the few massive redwoods that still watch over our earth (...) for if we want to look up at the sky and see a full moon, we ought to breathe softly, step lightly. Learn to give our world kisses instead of axes and then we might get somewhere.