Years ago, Seneca and I had just started dating when she invited me to her birthday party. I was completely smitten by this woman and was thrilled for the invitation. It would be our second date.
The party was at Sonya’s house, her good friend who lived in the Salt Lake City Avenues. Sonya’s backyard was beautiful and lush and adorned with 5 formidable, old pines whose branches reach high into the calm summer evening’s sky.
Strung between two of these beautiful trees was the most alluring hammock whose siren song lured Seneca and me to lay down side-by-side and flirt as we swayed in the easy breeze, drunk on the scent of pines. Unbeknownst to us, we were laying the foundation of an extraordinary relationship, an incomparable love.
Who would have guessed that 5 years later, Seneca and I would be married, with a 1-year-old son, and the new owners of Sonya’s house in the Avenues. Fortunately, the trees were sturdy enough and the hammock large enough to now hold three of us.
Fast forward a few years, we were living in France, renting out our house, and we got a dreadful message from our renter. He said that our beloved pines looked sick. We called the tree whisperers who examined them and determined that all five of them were stricken with bark beetles. All five had to be cut down before they fell down and caused damage to persons or property. The several thousands of dollars to have them cut paled in comparison to the grief we suffered to lose them. They were our elders, our family and they were dying or dead.
When we returned to Salt Lake City in January, right in time for Covid, we moved back into our house in the Avenues. The first thing we did when we came home was to go into the back yard and see the destruction. As we looked over the decimated yard, we were gut-punched. We stood watching the living nightmare that was our yard—a few remaining branches, massive blankets of sawdust, and the scars of five starkly shorn stumps. It was like seeing a family member who had recently lost a limb—five limbs.
We grieved sorely over the loss of our trees.
We knew that after our grieving, eventually we would have to replant and rework our yard. It was going to take a LOT of work to heal the damage. The project became known as “Yardmageddon.” Little did we know that we would have several months of quarantine ahead of us which would afford us pleeeeeenty of time to rework the yard. I ordered another yard waste container from the city.
We would have never chosen it, but given the circumstances, what we were given in this bleak, newly-exposed backyard, empty of its beautiful trees, was a blank slate. We had no choice but to create the kind of space that would suit our family. No longer was it Sonya’s yard, it would become ours.
We planted herbs. We pulled neglected vines. We resurrected the dormant hot tub.
One day at the beginning of the summer, I was hacking away at a jungle of Virginia Creepers when Sylvia, one of our delightful neighbors, kitty-corner to and just above our house, came over to our house to talk through her Covid facemask about our trees. She and her husband moved from England to their current house in the Avenues 35 years ago. Sylvia, too, lamented the loss of our beautiful trees. As she spoke of our trees with such familiarity and affection, it dawned on me that she had known our trees for 3 decades longer than we had. She told me how she missed our beautiful trees, “But,” she added, “it’s the first time in 35 years that we can see the Wasatch mountains from out our back window and there’s nothing like watching the moon rise over those incredible mountains!”
Neither of us would have chosen it. Still, what a gift.
Last week, northern Utah was ravaged by hurricane-force winds, including Salt Lake City, blowing over literally thousands of trees. Our 5 trees had been removed the year before. Otherwise, I’m confident that in their compromised state, they would have all come down causing unspeakable damage. Another hidden gift. They were harvested with the blessing of time and care.
Last week, after the storm died down, that evening we went out on our nightly walk around our neighborhood to see the damage. It was a horror scene. We were dumbstruck to see armies of trees uprooted and felled across lawns, spanning entire streets, and ripped from the ground, leaning on the houses they once shaded as if to die in the arms of those who loved them so dearly. Debris littered the sidewalks, streets, and lawns.
A week later, many homes are still without electricity. Throughout the day, one can hear the constant buzz of chainsaws busy amputating the limbs of these mighty beings so their trunks can be cut into smaller places and removed completely, leaving only the scar where they once grew. People are clearing, replanting.
Whatever storm you may be facing at the moment, it may be difficult to see the gifts embedded in your circumstances. Certainly, Covid has amplified every struggle we endure, struggles we might otherwise take in stride.
It’s important to remember that what’s true is true. What is…is.
I believe it to be our task, what our mindful practices have prepared us for, is to acknowledge what is—including grief, including the hidden gifts of our sad circumstances— and to learn to simply be with the information at hand. Then, from the grounded and real place of observation, compassionately respond with steps forward. Replant. Life is a blank slate.
I’m confident that if we are patient, we will see the gifts of these circumstances on the rise. Perhaps, if you live in Salt Lake City, you may see one of those gifts tonight as it rises brightly over the Wasatch.
“Barn’s burned down—
Now
I can see the moon.”