Dying aspen trees
Map
Map
Story & Experience
Standing by these Aspen trees in staggering beauty—I am saying goodbye to this place ever looking like it has before, because even in the three months since I was last here, it’s almost unrecognisable the tree died off so fast. Broken boughs, snapped trunks, dead trees everywhere—I stood in this gorgeous Grove almost not able to let myself look at the signs that they too were on their way—dying from the bottom up in the same way that Aspen forests all over the mountains have already died. Would I come back to see them again to bear witness to their leaving? I don’t know that I would and yet I’m going back up there again today to complete some filming and I don’t even know if my heart can take it.
I didn’t know what to say to the trees, except ‘I’m sorry’. I don’t know how to be amongst this die off and not feel crazy, split and broken right alongside the trees themselves. No one wants to look. No one wants to feel. Did we even deserve such majesty if we just turned away whilst our own lifestyles and ways of being caused their departure from this world?
Standing by these Aspen trees in staggering beauty—I am saying goodbye to this place ever looking like it has before, because even in the three months since I was last here, it’s almost unrecognisable the tree died off so fast. Broken boughs, snapped trunks, dead trees everywhere—I stood in this gorgeous Grove almost not able to let myself look at the signs that they too were on their way—dying from the bottom up in the same way that Aspen forests all over the mountains have already died. Would I come back to see them again to bear witness to their leaving? I don’t know that I would and yet I’m going back up there again today to complete some filming and I don’t even know if my heart can take it.
I didn’t know what to say to the trees, except ‘I’m sorry’. I don’t know how to be amongst this die off and not feel crazy, split and broken right alongside the trees themselves. No one wants to look. No one wants to feel. Did we even deserve such majesty if we just turned away whilst our own lifestyles and ways of being caused their departure from this world?
Additional Photos
[isc_list]
RECENT STORIES
Nature has the right (of) way at Riverside Salem
After brief introductions and orientation to the Radical Joy philosophy and practice, a dozen and a half curious humans scattered across the Riverside Salem landscape to explore what this ecosystem along the Niagara River would[...]
Honoring the Ash Trees
Our group in Ithaca, New York ended up doing our 2026 Global Earth Exchange two months late, because of our various scheduling conflicts. We chose this year to honor the ash trees. Ash trees across[...]
Close to Home & Heart…and Yet…
In the Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple Garden Even here, like so many places on Earth, there are wounds. Some have been ‘made’ sacred, some have not. In truth, it is all sacred if we[...]