Today is Sunday. All is quiet in the neighborhood.
As decreed, the destruction of the forest behind us began on Wednesday sending me into depression. I really do have a screw loose and more and more I find I have quite a few screws loose... about things other people don't think twice about...
I finally took off for the swimming pool around lunch time on Wednesday. I had escaped to walk John in the morning when the tree cutting had begun but there is only so long one can walk the hills far from home. I wasn't much interested in swimming but it gave me something to do, got me out of the house and gave me an excuse to linger over grocery shopping afterwards. Still, once at home I had to endure the power saws, the crunch as tree trunks were forced to breaking and then the crash and house shaking when the tree fell. That is going to go on for a couple of weeks...
Thursday it rained which called a halt to the tree cutting. I took hesitant glances through my windows to see how much of the forest was gone. A quarter? A third? I again escaped to a friend's house and dawdled in the afternoon delaying my return home until late. The tree cutters do their jobs from 8:00 to 5:00... It is hard to stay away from home for that long when I don't have a job that takes me away...
Friday the buzz saws and crunching and crashing began again so I went back to the swimming pool but called Marlene ahead of time hoping she would give me refuge for a few hours at her house after the pool. (She did.) I cried and expressed my frustrations and my wild plans to move to other parts of Japan or even America.
"I would rather move to an apartment and look at a wall that I've never seen before than look out on the scene from my windows so changed from what I remember!"
I am getting dramatic.
Tetsu is still trying to make me see the best of things. He tries to shelve my crazy plans to move to say... California! or Michigan! and tells me to look for good things. To get my mindset shifted. I am trying.
There was a Miyazawa Hayao animation movie that I loved in the 90's called Omoide Poro-Poro. Miyazawa Hayao-san's animations are always so beautiful and he captures scenery and nature exquisitely. The gist of the movie was that this city girl went to spend the summer in the countryside of Japan and she LOVED all the nature around her! Gorgeous! Japan was gorgeous! Nature was gorgeous! She went on and all about all the nature around her.
(From the Internet. "Only Yesterday" in Japanese "Omoide Poro-Poro)
And then the farmer who was taking her around said,
"It's all man-made you know. There isn't really anything natural here. All the mountains have been planted with trees, all the fields have been carved out of hills. What you see is just the result of our forefathers and their efforts to tame nature."
Well, something like that.
So I'm thinking that I am so distraught about my forest; all the nature that I love, being destroyed... but generations ago, some land owner actually planted that forest. Even I know that Japan is very good at cutting and seeding and harvesting and replanting forests. The hills around me are actually very beautifully regulated with their rows of different species of trees... Humans (the forest owners) have just decided to add their hand and to change the scenery of my little farming community again.
It gets done all the time and I frown about it but don't get quite as upset as when it is LITERALLY IN MY BACKYARD!!!
And this IS the view from my bedroom window, looking over the backyard.
I find the stumps of the trees left in the forest the saddest to look at. The surfaces are wet, not from rain but from the futile attempts of the roots to bring water to the tree that is no longer there.
I'm not doing a very good job of changing my mindset. I've never been good at accepting change.
The trees look to be sugi. Neighbors with allergies should find a bit of relief. These monocultural forests, planted during or just after the war are part of the big allergy problem as they have been left so many years while the Chinese cut and sold cheaper wood chopping up tropical forests. I feel your pain and know it must be hard to listen to. Here in Tokyo I grieve over old vintage houses and gardens being bulldozed to build apartment after apartment. The call of birds we enjoyed 50 years ago is now silent. They may plant another young forest and perhaps while those trees are still young, there will be more biodiversity. The only thing you have control of at this point is your attitude. Being upset is understandable but it will not change the situation. Look forward to a sunny garden instead. Mine is shaded by a forest of three and four story buildings.
ReplyDeleteThis is sad. You don't have screws loose. This is a normal reaction to such a drastic change in what was your everyday scenery. To have to listen to it and watch it happen quickly (but in what probably feels like slow motion) makes it all the harder to take. I may have missed it, but has anyone said what's going to happen to that land once it's cleared? Is something being built there?
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry. I love your reading about your quilts, and the loss of your forest breaks my heart. I plant a tree everywhere I can sneak them in, and water new boulevard trees in my neighborhood to the amusement of my neighbors. It matters. Deep breaths, and try to love the new vistas more than the loss of the sheltering forest.
ReplyDeleteAbby in Minnesota
I hope house or apartments will not be built there and that you can use the sun for your garden - it is sad seeing all the trees go I'm sure but try to think positive - and like another said maybe people with allergies will get relief
ReplyDeleteToo bad that they couldn't have just taken only some of them. Seems harsh to cut down all the trees. So sorry your yard is no longer treed and shady!
ReplyDeleteThat is a lot of trees being taken down. They just had a report that we may be able to fix climate change by planting more trees.
ReplyDeleteYou have had the forest for a long time, as long as you have lived there. No wonder you are grieving. Can you make something to remember the forest by? Or plant something? I grieve with you and with the trees.
ReplyDeleteYou shouldn’t apologise for something you love. I live in The Garden State, Melbourne, sadly there are so many high rise apartments being built, the trees and foliage are missing, a concrete jungle. We need our forests. I love your photo of the market garden field.
ReplyDeleteI don't like change either. Have you ever whittled anything? I wonder if there's a branch from one of those trees suitable in size for making a walking stick that you could carve/whittle dates, images... that kind of thing... to remember the forest by. Your own little keepsake. Just an thought.
ReplyDelete