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ROOTLESS

 

In the quiet New England ocean town that has been my home for some time, I’ve been bearing witness to a slow, deliberate erasure, one that cuts deeper with each passing year. A towering pine, part of a forest that had long anchored this land, was butchered to make room for new apartments. It wasn’t just one tree, but an entire cluster of hundred-foot pines, their deep, sprawling roots wrenched from the soil. What once felt timeless is now severed for something temporary. Yes, people need places to live, but I wonder what kind of life grows from poisoned soil, when we uproot without care, planting only what will rot in time.

The buildings that now rise, hastily thrown together with cheap materials, have no regard for longevity or harmony. They stand in contrast to the pines they replaced, giants whose roots had embraced the earth for generations. Watching this unfold feels like witnessing an ancient wound re-open, and it’s hard not to be reminded of the old nomadic tribes who moved from land to land, stripping away its value and leaving without looking back.

But this feels different. There are new tools of destruction at work, machines that ravage the earth at a pace our ancestors couldn’t have imagined, chemicals that seep into the ground, the air, the water. Where once humans moved through landscapes with a balance of use and respect, now we ravage, stripping ecosystems bare with poisons that don’t just kill the soil, but sicken the people who come to live on it. We seem to be destroying the microbiomes we depend on to breathe, and in the process, we’re growing sick from the inside out.

I’ve watched this carnage unfold for a few years now, giant root systems pulled from the ground as if they were weeds, not the very framework of this place. What remains of the forest is only a few pines, still standing but surrounded by a kind of emptiness. The land feels hollowed out. As I capture these scenes, it’s not just the trees or the earth I’m mourning. It’s something deeper, a severed connection between us and the world that sustains us.

There was a time when nature felt timeless here, when the land had the ability to recover from what we took. But now, with the tools we wield, we leave scars that may never heal. It wasn’t just a tree or a patch of earth. It was part of the very fabric of this town, of my memory, and in its loss, I feel the quiet unraveling of something essential.

New England-2024

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