My Backyard

When I was a child, my backyard was a sanctuary rife with the flora of the temperate rainforest inhabiting the greater part of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.

Two cherry trees marked the sides, exchanging pollination in creation, displaying their beauty each April as flower petals fell like God herself blessing me with the tears of angels. Each May, my tongue was stained and belly filled as ripe red cherries replaced the silky white flowers.

In the back of my yard, small plum and apple trees planted at the births of my sister and I stood grounded in their position in the yard as the branches of my sister and I emerged from our family tree. Having been uprooted thrice before taking roots in their final place, they too were young, growing with their backs to the shade and their branches too twisted to make sense.

We never ate from the apple tree in the back-left. Poking through the corner, her immensity was obscured until one stood on the barren soil protected by her umbrella. As if her giantess yielded too great of a power, for us to eat from her fruit would be a betrayal of her being. Instead, the apples would fall in their time and the dogs would play until the fruit and fallen leaves co-mingled in decay.

But, at the very back of the yard, behind the baby plum and apple tree, behind the bushes sprouting up against the chain-link fence to supplement the mark of humanity’s constructed claims with nature’s instinctive privacy, behind even the chain-link fence confirming the neighbor’s claim instead of our own, my twin firs towered as high as the sun. They were my protectors. To a child unable to see their peaks, the firs would reach to space. Imaginary-me would jump from branch root to branch root to pick the dragon eggs (unknowing the whiteness of fresh pine cones), climbing and jumping until my head was in outer space and I would see my family and sister below calling me to return to the grounded earth in my yard. They watched over my imaginary life with as much consideration as they watched over my real life—growing and protecting me from reality outside of my yard.

These firs were my rock. When the twin towers fell, mine were still standing. When my parents separated, my guardians were still together. When the troubled weight of puberty crushed too strong, my role models were still standing weightless against the sky.

Eventually, like the baby birds, it was my time to leave the nest and the nest I did leave. I saw the Eastern Hemlock of the mid-Atlantic, the great oaks of Minnesota threatened by bur oak blight, and rolling grass hills and hiking trails decorated by pasture and stone walls in Northern England, but my firs were still at home protecting my family while I wasn’t.

I returned to find a markedly changed landscape over the course of just six years.

The baby apple and plum trees fell first. Their crookedness from too many moves and too many heavy snowfalls did not ease well for the aridity and reduced water in the clouds and ground. The cherry tree on the right had died nearly overnight, the neighbor’s chainsaws commencing the funeral procession. Since then, his partner on the right grieves the fall of her cross-pollinator, lamenting her loss by producing too few cherries. The apple tree in the back continues to command. Her weightedness seems more prominent as her branches dance on the ground, creating a canopy of seclusion. Could she know the fate of her friends?

But the most affecting loss that compelled my inner child to weep was the death of one my twin firs. Ashen brown, its branches curled in expiration. I saw why conifers don’t lose their needles in the winter, their barrenness exposing and embarrassing like the nakedness of an elderly relative. Only the crows sat atop the dead fir, further confirming death’s arrival.

In time, the tree was removed. Torn down over the course of several weeks to leave behind the full burden of my family’s protection to his lone brother. Already, the loudened traffic from the main street a quarter mile down infiltrated the refuge of my yard. But most saddening, I think of the other twin, the one still rife with life and still stationed as my protector. How horrid would it be to lose your wombmate to such preventable fate? Unable to uproot, standing next to the carcass of your brother, then standing next to the opening of past’s kinship.

My Backyard Beyond

The timing of the twin fir’s fall laid a precursor for the fate of the wider Oregonian forests. Later that summer, the wildfires ravaged through 500,000 acres in the state alone and the void left by my fallen tree allowed the orange-tinted sky to spread a fuller canvas over my Salem home.

My breath held tight as I watched the fire maps announce the fiery arrival to my favorite local hiking spot at Silver Falls State Park. Thinking of all the firs succumbing to the engulfing flames, my home already felt less protected, the air less oxygenated.

As the fire-fated firs fell, with the changing climate’s decreased moisture and increased temperatures facilitating the spread of a starting spark, I thought of my own fir falling victim to the aridity brought on by climate change. What’s worse: a fighting chance despite routine thirst over a lengthened period of time, or a quick yet inescapable blaze to announce one’s end?

The Douglas Fir, distinguished beyond Oregon’s state tree christening, adorning our license plates and government documents with the assertion of ownership—Oregon is of the fir. We are of the tree, breathing by its photosynthesis, shaded by its greatness, sheltering in its lumber. It gives to us in all its capacity, yet we claim domination when we alter its atmosphere, disrupt its water flows, and clear-cut its community on the hillsides.

Oregon has had a history of conflict surrounding logging and poor forest management practices that have been attributed to the acceleration of such a mega-fire season this year. Still, political tensions stand across the charred lines pointing blame to the loggers or the climate deniers or the governor and her inaction on climate change or forest management. The prosperity of our state’s cultural assemblage is not only threatened by our geophysical alterations, but also by partisanship and inflamed tensions.

I think of the great migration of the birds, beetles, rabbits, and squirrels who are made refugees after the burning of their habitat. I think of how the charred trees will be removed eventually, like my fir. Instead of displaying the dead carcass as a symbol of systems failure and the imminent threat of climate change, we will leave an open abyss of educational and experiential erasure.

The smoke from the skies has dissipated and the wildfires are mostly contained—for this year. It’s hard to feel relieved at the clean airs when I think of the fires’ destruction in my favorite natural areas. It’s hard to breathe better when I think of the families who lost their material and emotional comforts, whose own protectors fell victim to the spreading flames. It’s hard to enjoy the Autumn when I think of next year’s fire season and the indifference of our leaders to enact any tangible climate action despite having nearly 40 years of scientific support. It’s hard to look at the hole where my tree once stood and think of how many more of his brothers will never grace our breaths again.