Page 79 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

Dark Matter: Women Witnessing - December, 2015 Issue #3 - EXTINCTION / DEVOTION

Whenever I attempted to bring the plight of our shrinking forest to anyone’s attention I was told that

Maine had one of the largest forests in the country, that a hundred years ago all these mountains were

cleared for farming, or most distressing, that I was a pessimist, wedded to a dark way of seeing.

Ten years ago we all crossed an invisible boundary. The price of lumber went up. Suddenly the logging

companies stripped whole mountains in a matter of weeks and virtually every neighbor of mine except

three closest to me stripped his/her land of every tree larger than a sapling. At any time of the year, I

would be awakened by screaming trees and skidder machines and the earth-shaking thuds of tree

trunks crashing into the ground.

When the back boundary of my precious

land was brutally logged for the first time I

made a pilgrimage through my woods up to

the ridge. I wept, said prayers for the dying

trees, felt the holocaust permeate every cell

in my body. I repeated this pilgrimage only

once, when the screeching skidder

machines returned a second time to mow

down more saplings to get to the last of the

Elders, those that used to be my boundary

trees.

When I discovered that our local land trust brokered a deal to buy a giant parcel of this same mountain

for adult recreational purposes as long as the conservation group agreed to having the land logged first

I was stunned. This meant nearly the whole of Moody Mountain, not just a few parcels. I loved this

mountain with her ragged granite cliffs, her caves, her springs and brooks, the comfort of her presence;

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