If We Knew She Could Feel

It never gets easier visiting the property. Each time, a new horror awaits us. I’ve found that I feel sick prior to visiting, barely able to get out of bed and get in the car to meet someone up there. For while the fire was contained over a month ago, the humans keep killing, tearing down trees in the name of safety, but really in the name of the almighty dollar. Rather than bury the power lines destroyed by the infernos, our power company, Pacific Gas and Electric, has taken the approach of Saruman the White: “Cut them all.”

When I first visited the property after the fire, all I could see was the ash. The complete and total annihilation caused by flame. What was once vibrant and green was gray. My beautiful house was reduced to a pile of fluttering white bits, scattered on the breeze. It overwhelmed me and yes, there was a bit of anger. Anger at life, at the fire, at the storm gods for sending that lightning. But there was also a strange sense of peace. As D’ougal, my best pine tree-friend, had said to me, “fire is life,” and I could sense that pulsing through the energy of the mountain. The beings of the mountain had stood steady in the flames and what will be, will be.

The next time I visited, I noticed the gaping wound, caused not by the flames, but by men with machines. They lined the mountain, chopping, cutting, tearing, and labeling with their mighty pen who might live and who might die. It was terrifying, but of course I understood that the roads must be cleared of any potential threat. Dead, two hundred foot tall trees can wreak havoc during a rainstorm. Yet seeing the piles of tree trunks littered about my yard was another thing. No one had called us. No one had prepared us. Rather than let the property owners know that tree work would be done, PG&E just felled them and left the massive bodies strewn about my driveway and yard for me to deal with.

There are two sets of powerlines that cross through my yard and PG&E of course owns the easements under them. However, until the fires, they’ve always called us to gain permission to access the trees and trim them for safety. Since the Paradise fire in 2018, they came around more often, but still, there was a working relationship between ourselves and Davey Tree, the contractor chosen by PG&E to manage the forest. This time however, PG&E didn’t even bother to alert us. There was no conversation and down came the madrones, firs, redwoods, and live oaks, all deemed dead or a threat. Then they moved outside of the easement, encroaching even more on our land, killing the trees that might fall onto their precious wires. Worse, they never tell us when they’ll be working on the property, which makes meeting contractors difficult. I need estimates for cleanup, repair, and tree work for insurance. Two weeks ago, when I walked in on them them murdering the largest madrone at the top of my property, I lost it. At the very least they could let me know when they’d be there so I didn’t book these appointments, and for god’s sake, clean up the mess so that there’s access for the various crews I’m meeting.

That day they promised me the madrone was the last tree slated for removal on my property and did as I asked and cleared my driveway so that the septic guy could bring his truck in. Two days later, I spent the afternoon under the only living trees on the top part of my property—the live oaks that lined our street, Robles Drive, named after the scrubby trees. I set up my chair and waited for the contractors in the deep silence, for no one lives on that street anymore because only one house still stands. The arborist I had hired had told me that these live oaks were alive and to leave them alone. They were the only thing protecting us from the road. The folks from Erosion Control also said those trees were alive. Moreover, when I left that day, there were none of the fatal green marks on them, they weren’t slated for slaughter by the powers that be.

One week later, the live oaks were gone. Every single one cut down by PG&E, all along our road. Living trees, the ones that survived the firestorm, reduced to wood chips. For what? Power. Do I like electricity? Of course I do. But why not bury the lines? Why not continue to prune the oaks as they had for decades? Instead, PG&E took advantage of the fact that no one lives there at the moment, so no one could protect their trees. In our time of great need, we were sold out.

There were several workers hanging out in the yard next to mine, taking a break from their slaughter, and they saw me as I got out of my car and fell to my knees. For some reason the pain of this experience will wash over me in such a way that my body simply gives out and I’m unable to stand. I cried out, “They took them all! They took them all!” My neighbor, Beatrice, stopped to hug me. She was on the way to her property, hoping that her oaks still stood. The workers stared at us, men and women alike, and I wondered if they even cared. Did my emotions give them pause, or am I just a nutter clinging to her trees because I’ve lost so much? Moments later, as I walked down my melted driveway to meet my husband, in the distance I could hear Beatrice’s wails echoing across the ashen, barren, landscape. It was apparent that her oaks were also taken by the machines. It makes me wonder, if we knew that trees could feel, would we mindlessly slaughter them? If we knew the earth could feel, would we drill into her depths and tie her up in electrical wires? Perhaps our inability to understand that all of life is alive is the root of our collective environmental terrorism?

There’s a helplessness that engulfs you when you stand in the killing fields, even if it is a row of tree trunks rather than the trenches of WW1. I want to speak out, to take on PG&E and make the world aware of what they’re doing here but speaking out also scares me. What can one person do against such a powerful company? It’s the same with the insurance company. Everything is a fight when all I want to do is disappear into the tragedy, to get lost in the emotions, tend to my heart, and lick my wounds. Instead I have to battle these mega-corporations simply to have the right to someday return to my land and live there, just as I had before. We make agreements with these companies and yet they create their own terms when it suits them. It’s like I’m being raped, and I’m stone cold sober, and they’re just telling me to lie back and enjoy myself as they each take turns.

Feelings of this sort of loss are intense. I’m constantly processing anger, disbelief, fear, depression, lethargy, and anxiety. Yesterday, I had to go meet a research team that wants to put wattles on the property that are inoculated with some sort of fungi in hopes that they can help rebuild the land. This is the sort of meeting that should provide me with hope, and it did. Yet my heart pounded with dread as I prepared myself for whatever horror awaited me when I arrived. Would the ancient fir trees the arborist thinks are alive under their burn scars still be there? Would my driveway be clear, or strewn with tree debris left behind by hasty crews? Would there be rows and rows of machines digging and cutting? I should be excited to see the property, like visiting an old friend. Instead, I wanted to hide under the covers.

In order to survive a wildfire, you have to do more than evacuate. You also have to be able to let go of everything and cling to nothing, for in reality, nothing is ever lost. The trees live on in their seeds, now sprouting deep within the fire-blessed soil. The memories live on within our hearts. The stars still shine above and now I have a great view of the cosmos. I know this, and yet somehow my mind and body do not. Thoughts swirl around me like dust clouds—what I could have done differently, the latest thing I need to do for insurance, the next thing I need to do to clean up the property, the next list I need to get on, etc. etc. I’m distracted by the smallest thing. My stomach feels queasy, like I’m forgetting something but I can’t recall what. I know I’m doing this wrong and I hate that. My neck is tense and my gaze can’t focus on anything for too long. It’s like I’m two people—one who feels liberation in the process of letting go of every thing and another who clings to the ways of the western mind and wants it all to be fair.

Here’s the kicker: life isn’t fair. It just is, and right now life is telling me to be with the situation and feel it, with all its tragedy, because it can’t be anything else. I miss my land. Every view was stunning and it was never lost on me. For almost thirteen years, I gave thanks at the sights. The oaks that lined my road were the first tree people to greet me as I drove under them in October of 2007 to see what lie beyond. The moment we met, I knew I’d found our home. When my arborist told me they were still alive, I was elated. Now they are gone, trunks strewn across the killing fields. This is what happened, and rather than hide from the pain, I stood among their corpses yesterday and acknowledged the death of our world at the hands of industry. I let the anger and the frustration and the grief flow through me, like the firestorm that cast me from my land. Raw elemental energy surrounded me and it was a good thing that the men and their machines were nowhere to be seen.

I can’t bring those oaks back, but I will not abandon my land. We will build a solar powered home, able to live off the grid. PG&E took our trees, tis true, yet they also gave us what we needed to live in a self-sufficient home—copious amounts of sunlight. We will harness that power. We will plant redwoods along our property line as well as orchards to hide the substation that is now bare for all to see. PG&E’s literal power grab while we were absent was a sin, but their greed may well be the independence we needed to shift to the 21st century. The choice is ours. For now, we will sing to the trees that are left, we will visit them, and we will tend to the ones yet to be born. This land has taught me it can feel, and we promise to remember that as we create the next dwelling blessed to reside amongst the Big Trees.