Ripped
Ripped up by the roots. Grabbed by the throat, yanked into the air, and thrown down onto the ground.
The effect of such violence startled and shook me as I took my daily drive, winding through Chicago’s Jackson Park to South Lake Shore Drive as I made my way toward work.
What usually yields a scene of emerald lawns and trees bursting with leaves, trees whose lush foliage causes them to preen like natural royalty, instead revealed mass carnage, left behind in the wake of a storm.
The storm had raged through the middle of the night in early fall, a time when the weather is often fickle – like a debutante who can’t decide what to wear, flinging dresses on and off in a frenzy of indecisiveness.
Once morning came and the sun shed light on what had happened the night before, the devastation kept unfolding as I rode north, then east through the park and toward the lake.
Clumps of trees seemed to cling together in grief, mourning those that had fallen and struggling to hold up the ones still standing.
Shards of trees, left behind by lightning blasts, exposed pale inner bark, raw flesh with jagged edges now exposed to the air.
Mounds of matted dirt and roots, which looked much taller than my 5-and-a-half-foot frame, faced me with the ugly, unhappy truth that that they no longer were where they were supposed to be and wouldn’t be returning.
And though thankfully there were no human bodies in the midst of the destruction, it truly felt like a crime scene.
Yes, there was “do not cross” police tape looping around felled trees – like yellow ribbons tied around oak, maple and weeping willow trees.
But the loss – especially of the trees that had offered shade to man, bird, dog and countless squirrels, really struck me as criminal. I couldn’t help thinking that what can take years to sow, sprout, develop roots, reach through the soil and grow thick and tall, can be wiped out within minutes.
Yet despite the wreckage, I also saw that many more trees had survived the storm’s chaos.
Despite the death all around, I saw the life that was stronger and persisted. I saw trees covered with thick, ridged bark, wearing their many years like an elder whose hair is thick and wavy but streaked with silver strands. I saw trees that could be called “new jacks,” little tykes asserting their identity and place with only a few branches and leaves poking out and up into the air.
Since that morning after the storm, I’ve also seen efforts to clean up and move forward. I’ve seen men rise up in cup-shaped cranes who cut down branches half-severed by lightning. Other men make progress on the ground, cutting into pieces the cast-down trees that had been strewn all around, in every which way.
I think of how those dead limbs and branches will find new use as firewood, transformed into small logs that will heat homes as fall morphs into winter. Something dead will be used to help sustain those who live.
And I also think about how next spring, gardeners will be out planting new trees to help fill the gaps left by the old. Saplings will be brought in, to help extend the rich green carpet that lays just a few steps from the lakefront.
And though I appreciate the turning of the leaves on the many trees that still stand, as they shift from green to yellow, gold, maroon and rust, I’m already looking forward to the new life I know that’s coming next spring.
by Ann Pinkney
