I went outside this weekend and watched my neighbor annihilating the trees behind his house. I do mean that literally.

I had been enjoying fall immensely. As anyone who knows me knows (and I’ve said it here before) fall is my favorite time of year. It is a very powerful time, a time when one season is dying away to give way to the dark side of the year, not to new life as in spring, but to death. And a very real prospect of death it was to our ancestors, subsisting in a marginal economy and often on marginal land. I can run to the store and stock up on food against the stray blizzard, and when I stockpile fire wood I’m not stockpiling it with the thought that my very life depends upon it. My fires are more for pleasure, and for saving on heating bills.

As I’ve said here before, I’ll thank the animal for giving its life for me and I’ll apologize to the tree before I cut it down, but I will kill the animal and I will cut down the tree. But what my neighbor is doing this fall is nothing short of murder. There is a wooded area behind his house and he just bought it from the “old man” who used to own all the land that comprises my neighborhood. He decided he wanted to build a pole barn back there (he needs one for all his tractors and trailers). To that end, he got himself a bulldozer and he has been bulldozing every tree in sight. It’s like watching the rain forest be raped. But it’s happening next door.

My senses cry out when I watch this. It’s so impersonal. You know those trees mean nothing to him. They’re objects and they’re in his way and they have to move – as expeditiously as possible. As a Heathen of course I am thinking of the land-wights (On landvætt pl. landvættir). I leave offerings for the wights. Any sane Heathen knows it’s better to have the wights on your side than against you. Nothing good can come of slaughtering their trees that way. That’s the pragmatic Norseman speaking. Then there is the lover of beauty and the pain of loss, seeing that nice secluded, wooded area give way to man-made structures. Then there is the sense of nature violated by such brutal methods. Perhaps there is no difference in axes and saws and chainsaws and bulldozers but degrees of efficiency, but I can’t look at it that way. To me, this is no different than my childhood friends on their hunting expeditions blasting squirrels and butterflies out of the air with their shotguns because they were bored. It seems like wanton destruction.

Nor is my neighbor all that careful about property lines, but that’s another story. Just take this from me: don’t let anyone excuse their boorish behavior with “I’m a country boy; that’s how we do it.” My family are good solid Scandinavian country folk and we don’t act like boorish louts.

So it’s a slightly sadder fall this time around. I’m already giving thought to a new barrier of trees between us – there are some really nice trees out there and I can pick and choose what to plant. It won’t be the same but it will be giving some life back in exchange for the taking. And here my Blessing for Planting comes to mind again:

(Lifting the plant to be put into the soil before you)
May the Lord and the Lady (i.e. Freyr and Freyja)
Bless you
And Grant you long life
and good health

For you are as much a part of this world as I am

(as you place the plant in the ground)
What I take away from Midgard (i.e. the earth) [I cut down plants/trees, pull weeds, etc]
I return to it. [by planting new things - restoring balance]

(as you fill in the soil around the plant)
Grow well little children of the soil
under sun and moon and stars
This blessing I offer

I don’t know that the sort of brutality being practiced next door will not have a long term affect on the natural world in my corner of the universe, but I will do what I can to make up for it, though the crime is not my own. I think at least an apology should be offered, but I know the trees did not get that much from the man, who cannot even apologize to another human for his rash and thoughtless acts.

It is fall, and things die, but we don’t have to add needlessly or thoughtlessly to those deaths.

On a related note: Saving Our Ash Trees

As every Heathen knows, ash trees are sacred not only to Native Americans. Yggdrasill is an ash. More, the first woman was Embla (often taken to be an Elm), while the first man was named Askr (ash-tree) according to the Voluspa 17 and 18. Oðinn himself gave them (Askr and Embla) breath and life.