Pritchard’s Park

To be is to be related, for relationship is the essence of existence …Nothing is itself without everything else. –The Universe Story, Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry, p. 77

Nothing says “summer” like a goldfinch. They are the sun incarnate in brilliant, blazing, yellow garb. Their seasonal plumage traces the language of light through the seasons, from dusky winter whispers to gilded, glowing arias at high summer. 

These goldfinches are a welcome sight this year. You see, much of the forested area around our home was felled this winter to make way for a parking lot for the public library expansion project. Our bird feeder has taken a hit, with far fewer feathered friends coming by to scoop up sustenance of late. Last year, the finch competition at the feeding ring was fierce and I was feeling the pinch of rising prices at the sunflower-seed pump. This year I glory in the few that have stuck around and silently urge them to eat their fill. 

The chorus of birdsong is drowned out each day by the sounds of bulldozers, ground movers, land levelers, and beep-beep-beepers of unidentified stripe. Though the day is dry and cool, my windows and doors are tightly shut to dampen the aural assault. It’s been like this for months, and I’ve been too heartbroken to write about it. As if it will go away if I don’t talk about it. 

Even now, I hadn’t intended to write about this. These simple words of local loss surprise me. I thought I was going to write about something truly earthshaking, like the origins of the universe, the miracle of the evolutionary imperative, the profound interconnectedness of all beings. (Doesn’t the Summer Solstice betoken such grand gestures?) But no; I’m right here, right now, grieving for the loss of my backyard stand of Loblolly pines and my little piece of greenpeace.

Even now, I can feel the way I’ve paved over my own heart’s sorrow by minimizing this change, ignoring it, or telling myself to get over it. But every day as I come in and out of my front doorway, I avert my eyes. I really don’t want to tell you about how it felt when I came home one January day, all unsuspecting, to the chilling, shrilling sounds of chainsaws and the thundering thuds of toppling trees. And I don’t want to recall how I jumped over the fence in a white-hot rage, planted myself on a felled tree, and was nearly arrested by the police when I demanded that the despoilers cease and desist.

As I said, this isn’t what I thought I was going to write about. But maybe the goldfinches have passed along sunflower seeds of remembrance this day; reminding me that love is a gift—love of place, love of land, love of trees and birds and deer and squirrels and flowers, and soothing breezes and filtered light. And maybe this is a way to fulfill a promise to a friend, Trebbe Johnson, who is offering a world-wide Earth Exchange ritual day this coming June 23rd to honor such losses, great and small, through witnessing and bringing beauty to a wounded place. The invitation is to not only visit the damaged scene but also to compile something beautiful to leave behind, as we would offer flowers to a sick friend; to celebrate what this place has meant to us; and to extend a token of faith that our relationship with it will continue even as its former charms have gone. 

The Summer Solstice, when the sun is at its apogee, seems a discordant time to be writing about loss and grief. But perhaps this is the best time, when there is abundant light and exuberant energy to sustain us as we face some stark truths about our relationship to our world. And maybe the best thing we can do is to love it anyway and not turn our backs on any piece of it, no matter what. I don’t know if I’m really up for all of this. But I’m going to start in my own back yard.