Witnessing Change
By Charles Shea LeMone
From my mountaintop, over the years I’ve seen so much change about the landscape in all four directions. I used to watch the buffalo herds as they migrated through a nearby pass, kicking up swirls of dust that seemed to travel a mile into the sky. Eagles and falcons once soared above them, too, in a sky that was so much bluer back then.
I also miss seeing the red men and their women and children who camped near the creek below me during the spring. Then they’d leave and return in late summer. But that was before the pale men came with their fire sticks, and the iron horse brought the thundering of its wheels, announcing the coming of a new age.
Gone too are the roaming families of wolves; and now their cousins the coyotes and the sly foxes are so scarce they are seldom seen. So many breeds of birds that once made this mountainous region their home no longer exist. Could it be pesticides and toxic waste from factories poisoning the streams and rivers that are killing them all off? Is that why the honeybee and bat population is dwindling so dramatically year-by-year?
Oh, how I miss the days long ago, when the red men had a spiritual connection to the land and their songs and dances reflected their respect for Mother Nature, and the wind whispered their beliefs. They lived in perfect harmony with their surroundings. Now it seems the pale men’s desire to conquer nature has only made their own extinction an inevitable fact of life.
As I watch another bulldozer demolish the birch, cedar, maple, elm, pine and brother oak trees on a nearby rise, I wonder about my own fate. How many more seasons will I see before my roots are buried below a slab of cement? For my rings have now reached the count of 196 years, and reflections of more glorious times fill my days and nights with sad whisperings passing through the leaves on my limbs.
If only I could speak and share my laments to the present day humans who have lost touch with the beauty and significance of what nature has to offer them in so many countless ways. I’d tell them of their connection to all living things and that even inanimate objects have a story to tell. I’d tell them about the power of the unseen world too.
Unfortunately, though, even if I could speak their language I doubt if any of them would take the time to listen to the words spoken by an old oak tree.
