Climbers of the Self-Limiting Sort

Tree-cutters. Like ants dismembering a spider, they have an arcane charm. Industrious, militaristic workers, who operate fast. The poplars were coming down, regardless of the guilt trips I had set for my parents. And while I admired the workers' balance, their down-up communication, the way they never smiled, it was their reflexology that impressed me. The way they grasped the tree, each man applying his influence. Here I had a new phenomenon, I thought. The art of ungrowth.

If you've never seen a large tree dismantled before, there are certain things you should know: one, there is a lot of technique. Which branches come down first is the crucial question that the foreman on the ground will relay to the climbers. The climbers are the young guys and the strong men who for some reason decided that removing trees would be their occupation for a while. They get scared too, you can watch it from your second-storey window. But their nervousness belies the thrill. They overcome their fears, and you can imagine the moment with them. They will attach ropes to heavy branches, thick ones not easily broken, and use pulleys to lower them down. They call and chainsaws are belayed up on chords as fast as bungee chords, already revving and hungry. Branches will crack and plunge and sometimes thump the ground so hard the house shakes. BOOM. I've awoken to these sounds every non-rainy day for two weeks.

There are no hydraulic aids for the crew, half of whom are perched in high branches, while the others pace on the ground where small-toothed saw blades resembling samurai swords rest in silver indents on the lawn. The tree is straddled with cords and it is almost like 10 miniature dentists working on a rotten tooth in someone’s neglected jaw. Our backyard is full, the trees have shimmied in, staggered and haggard. Now we call the doctors. Take 'em out, we say. The grass is dead.

The grass is dead. Why should I care more about the trees than the lawn, asks Josh. I care about coral, I offer. Grass is so... perverse.

And so every year I kill it with my kiddie pool.

I don't care about the lawn and I can see these men don't either. The frame is coming down now, the tree has been mutilated to its trunk, and I see the horror in calling the torso of an animal "the trunk". The horror is here, in the tree when it, too, is exposed limbless. A horrifying moment - do the climbers feel regret? Up in that beautiful leafy exhibit, and now to have sawed off the roof... The tree, looking now like a trunkated totem pole, like those in zoos as air canoes for vultures and for owls. The branches that nestle the lawn are sawed apart and tremble, like nerves. I can't watch them shiver, the leaves still watching the sun. The ropes come down and the men assemble, but don't meet the others in the eye. There's something tragic and the sun knows it. If only it could hide its distress.