Peak Wood, and How to Evoke a Visceral Reaction

A particular stretch of highway I drive on every day to work is undergoing massive landscape "restructuring."  I call it restructuring, the developers call it "developing," and most would call it terrorization and rape.  One day, I literally watched a man-made machine GRAB a tree, squeeze, and CHOP IT DOWN.  In the blink of an eye.  Then my car passed.  I'm sure that went on all day, because the next day, that stretch of road was no longer the edge of a forest, but was a messy clearing filled with old trees on their side.

Today, those old trees were being fed into a chopper of some sorts, getting completely obliterated, and then shot through the air into a massive pile of mulch and chips.  Equally terrifying.  And this is just one machine, one forest edge.  Worse is happening all over the world as we destroy hundreds and thousands of years of nature's work.

We crave wood to fuel our society in so many ways, yet we cringe when we see a majestic tree fall as if it were a toothpick.

I'll share with you a story from the Talmud, Taanit 23a:

While walking along a road, a sage saw a man planting a carob tree. He asked him: "How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?" "Seventy years," replied the man. The sage then asked: "Are you so healthy a man that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?" The man answered: "I found a fruitful world, because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise I am planting for my children."

 Bonus:
Peak Wood

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