They cut down my trees while I was out of town. And at first, I honestly thought I was losing my mind. Not metaphorically, not in some dramatic way. I mean, I stood in my own backyard staring at sunlight where there had never been sunlight before, trying to remember if maybe, just maybe, I had imagined those trees all along, but I hadn’t. I knew those trees.
I planted two of them myself. The other ones had been there longer than I had. Tall oaks that swayed just enough in the wind to sound like the ocean at night. The kind of trees that make a place feel settled, like it belongs to itself. And now they were gone. Just gone. Only four pale raw stumps left behind.
Like someone had a raised part of my life with a clean, confident hand. I live in a small town outside Asheville, North Carolina. Well, technically outside the town limits where things get a little quieter, a little less regulated, and people tend to mind their own business, which is exactly why I bought that house 8 years ago.
It backed up to a private golf course, which at the time felt like a bonus, not the main attraction. I don’t even golf. Still don’t. What sold me was the line of oak trees along the back edge of the property. They created this natural wall, shade in the summer, windbreak in the winter, and just enough privacy to make you forget there was an entire fairway on the other side.
