COMMENTARY : His Land, but Only Nature Owns Trees

An open letter to my neighbor who only knows me by name:

I am a writer and an art critic. I write reviews for a weekly journal in L.A. Today while you were chain-sawing a large limb off the oak tree that covers our two back yards, I was reading a book titled “The Last Lords of Palenque,” an anthropological and personal account of a group of ancestors of the Mayans, the Indians of the rain forests of Southern Mexico. I am going next week to Palenque and to a Spanish colonial town at the gateway to the mahogany forests of Mexico and Guatemala. I am reading about the decimation of the Indian culture there, about the Christianization of the natives and the destruction of their mammoth forests by Occidentals who cut the trees for profit.

Our back yards, our plots of land, the real estate that we own are the world to us, more significant than the planet as a whole, more significant than other people’s freedom or comfort factors, more significant, even, than freedom in general; all by virtue of the fact that we own them. Possession, we are taught, is nine-tenths of the law, but we are not taught what that means or how little significance it has beyond the rubric of legal codes. So when we own a plot of land, we do what we want with it, oftentimes brazenly, oftentimes deleteriously. Usually egotistically.

I don’t agree with what you are doing. The chain saw has been buzzing all day, grinding and groaning through the thick limb of a 75-year-old California live oak that grows on my property. I don’t own that tree; only Nature owns the trees. So I don’t agree with what you are doing, even though you told us you were going to cut the limb that extends into your yard, to make room for the house you are building for your parents.

You are not cutting the tree limb for its health. You are not trimming it to lighten its load. You are cutting it to fill a beautiful, spacious back yard with yet another structure. The neighborhood is being glutted with buildings and more buildings because people do what they want with their plots of land.

I don’t like what you are doing because it is a destructive thing in many ways. Funny, then, that it is called “construction.” I don’t like it because I will now be squeezed between two buildings where for 13 years I have lived in view of grass and mountains and trees with air all around me. Now it will be oppressive, perhaps, a bit claustrophobic. I am ready for that, though, because, after all, this is merely my comfort factor talking now, isn’t it?

My pain at what you are doing is minor. It will last only as long as the construction noise lasts. It will last only as long as each future glance I take out my window lasts, where I will see a wall in place of grapevines and oak trees and sky. And for today it will last only as long as the chain saw buzzes, as long as each flinch I feel lasts, caused by another chunk of limb crashing to the ground, hitting so hard it echoes through the earth and reverberates into my room where I sit writing. The tree, as does all Nature, forgives you.

However, I do not; it’s not my place to forgive you. I am well aware, though, from your manner of explanation, that you feel I should be offended by what you are doing because if you were me, you likely would be. You might even be up in arms about it. But I am not. It is your plot of land, and it is your business as a professional contractor to cover plots of land with buildings. There is nothing I can do about such choices, as misguided as they often seem to me.

Also, I don’t care about the abandoned bathtubs and overgrown garden next to our driveway, which you now suggest might have been disturbing to me all along and which you now assure me is on its way out. On the contrary, weeds do not offend me. I like them better than many man-made things.

I don’t smile with you at the commendable strictness of Monrovia’s City Code, which makes this all palatable because at least it will be an aesthetic house. That is of little relevance under the circumstances (also, I am well aware that Monrovia is a preservationist community and has been for some time, which I find to be refreshing.)

And I don’t celebrate with you your satisfaction and pride at building a house in the “right” style. Nor do I lambaste or condemn you for doing it. It’s what you’ve been taught. It’s your ethic. Mine lies elsewhere. In the rain forests, perhaps. In the tragedy of the streets where people’s only shelters are cardboard boxes, not pretty houses. In the art museums where the vision is broader than anyone’s back yard.

Editor’s note: The San Gabriel Valley section runs commentary pieces from readers from time to time. Andreoli-Woods is a Monrovia writer.