When Trees Are No More

Wild fires are having a good time because there’s nothing to stop them. No trees means no buffer to the sun and wind.

You see, we became developed, cut them down so that we can build baseball and basketball stadiums, highways, housing estates, nuclear plants, office buildings and factories.

We gave  agriculture a new name: exports. Everything in the soil is produced in bulk so that it can be sold all over the world. Trees are in the way so we ‘clear the land’ for fruit farming, sugar estates, tobacco and other agricultural exports.

Trees are the main target when ‘clearing the land.’ There are old and baby trees. We lease big logging machines to not only cut them down, but excavate 100 years- old roots as well.

Trees are gone, but nature continues with its program, sun and wind.  Trees absorb angry sun rays until the sun gives up and it rains. They also absorb the rain, making all kinds of soothing sounds we don’t hear because we’re wearing headphones.

It’s only ‘primitive’ people in so-called underdeveloped countries who enjoy those sounds. Architects, excavators, ministers of housing and other people involved in ‘clearing the land’ to make way for air-conditioned condos and shopping malls do not know the value of trees, because they’ve never sat under one.

Trees are gone but winds come and they should. There’s no resistance. The few trees in your neighborhood try to fight but are not strong enough because they grew up on steroids. The wind flattens them and they fall on parked cars and your roof.

Don’t be alarmist. It’s not that bad. Nature displays tantrums from time to time. Surely, we cannot stop building factories for more advanced cellphones and microwave ovens, because of some floods in Germany and China, and ongoing fires in British Columbia.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.