From the top of the dirt path I could see huge patches of brush trampled over by a skidsteer, the little paths that had wound in and out of the undergrowth turned to gaping muddy thoroughfares, and every trace of both the Fox and the Phoenix, every log and leaf and stone, were gone.
Where they’d dumped all that material, it pains me to guess, but I’m skeptical that it’s serving any better purpose now. The ground in that little clearing was scraped bare of plant life and monuments leaving nothing but a brown, barren wasteland in the middle of the woods. They came, they took, and they left, and no doubt considered their deed a great success. |
For my part, I was mostly only shocked, wondering how someone could be so driven to cause such destruction, when there are so many other things that time and energy could have been spent on.
I wasn’t angry - I never owned the land or the trees or the structures themselves, and what I’d done had not been for me. It was all for the forest, for being a part of it and taking advantage of what it has to offer, making something beautiful out of something so simple, giving everyone else something to see. All of those logs and stones were there when I arrived, and I had only rearranged them with the hands I was born with. I had broken no laws, disrupted no ecosystems; I was a bird building a nest, a badger in his den; I operated as unit of the woods itself, did all I could to become a part of it, to loose myself from the grim practicality of the city above me. Like vultures, though, the city came for me, took away what I considered an expression of life, and left the rest to rot. |