June 7, Long Beach
Yes. Five months since that bright morning when I walked out on my bluff, and was awestruck by the giant orangish clouds blowing up from Pacific Palisade. We had evacuated several weeks before for the Franklin Fire, which was much closer and so my neighbors and I decided that this one was too far away to worry about.
This image makes my heart race and tears flood.
I visit my once upon a time ago home every week, which is now a sacred writing space for me. My front steps are the only ‘thing’ remaining of my nest and so there I sit…and my birds gather and chit chat.
Last Saturday was sunny and vibrantly alive with a gusty wind and cloudless sky, The figs on my fig tree are strange this year, the lemons are small but trying, the apricot tree is more luxuriously full than ever, and the nectarine tree has dozens of wee hard as rock fruit. We each ride this traumatic event in our own unique way…and this evidence in nature teaches us.
My writing on this day was a long letter to my New York daughter. Time and distance has played with us oddly during these months, but who would we be without family to share spontaneous depths with. I wrote and wrote..in signing off, peace and love filled my heart…I dropped my paper and pen in my car and walked up to the higher bluff where I have daily spent hours of quiet and being with my two giant eucalyptus trees as soul companions, looking out over the ocean and up at the sky.
And Then.
Walking up my path, breathing in the sunny warmth and watching the new wild grasses blowing in the light, I looked up and the world fell away beneath my feet.
My most glorious eucalyptus, the queen of trees, my friend, whose bark changed color with minute shifts of light and whose leaves fluttered messages that needed no interpretation…..WAS GONE.
‘The straw that broke the camel’s back.’ happened.
I felt as if my elephant friend had been shot for its ivory.
She was chopped down because the new owner of this property is to build a five car garage where she stood.
And I have been quiet all week. This was a big one.