Saying Good-bye to Trees

I live about 40 minutes from CNU.  Each time I go down I drive on I-64.  It is often clogged with traffic, especially when I'm returning home on Sunday afternoons.  They are widening it.  It needs to be widened as it is one of the main arteries into Hampton Roads.  But one of the reasons I have always liked the stretch of road between Newport News and Williamsburg is the trees.  They line both sides of the interstate and fill the median.  When I used to drive from Norfolk to parts further north, I would always breathe a sigh of relief when I left Newport News and reached the stretch of interstate with the trees.

They're taking down the trees.  Every time I drive to CNU, my heart sinks.  I watch the man in the cherry picker lopping off the high branches.  I see tree trunks stripped of branches sticking up out of the earth.  Further along there are stacks of tree trunks in bundles.  Redbuds, dogwoods, pines, maples, sweetgums, trash trees and ornamentals, all decimated.  It breaks my heart, and it's been even worse as the trees have started blooming, only to be cut down.  I hear the words of Dr. Seuss from the Lorax:  "I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees."  I know that the trees have to come down for the road to be widened.  I know that I will be glad when I am no longer stuck for hours at a time in traffic.  But I hate to say good-bye to the trees.

Saying good-bye is hard no matter what.  I had a sweetgum tree removed from my yard in January.  It was growing into my deck and starting to lift the railing off its posts.  Still, I hated to see it go.  I will not miss the sweetgum balls, but I will miss the red and yellow leaves in the fall and the shade in the summer and the birds and squirrels that perched on its branches. I will miss staring up through it's leafy bower to the sky.

I wish that progress didn't mean so much destruction to the natural world.  I know that I will be glad when the construction is done and traffic flows more smoothly.  But oh, how I will miss the trees.