August 14 2007, 09:34 PM Sirens

From the study, I can look across the valley up the hill to where the fire station sits. When the calls come in and they spin up the red lights, I can watch their progress down the hill. They usually fall silent until they reach the intersection, and the trucks let out a mighty wail to mark their passing. I know that I am only seeing the very beginning of a story - I wonder at where they go.

The other evening when the winds came through, they did a fair amount of work. A piece of the commute can wind through the back end of a hollow in the park, should I choose the route (I often do - blackberries grow there). The wind did much work there, and there is more light in that back corner than there was some days ago. The wind came as a great paw from the sky, pushing down a swath some ten yards wide and who knows how long - such things are hard to see in the lie of that land. It was sad to see so many big trees down, but that's the way it goes, sometimes.

Down in the hollow, there was one tree that splintered and snapped somewhat up from the forest floor, and the violence of the fall and the wind took away all of the bark along six feet of it, free of detail and suspended where it fell, nearly on the horizontal. Someone has taken it upon themselves to use that bit of trunk as a canvas: today, a stenciled message (in stain, or paint, or possibly woodburning) appeared:

I do not know who put it there, or how they did, or how long it will last. I do not know what they finally do with the old trees, fallen, cut, and stacked like toy logs at the side of the service road.

Maybe they mill them.