We saw a murder

Education for the Future | Personal Journal & Field Experience |Sept 4, 2008 | 1 hour field work

Yes, the 15 month old and I saw a murder yesterday. It was horrifying, terrifying, disturbing and all of those emotions were evident in the whole being of the 15 month old. I had to leave the scene instantly and for a long while later kept saying, "that was very very sad". What did we see murdered?

A tree.

Yes, a whole, live, perfectly healthy, flourishing, breathing, living tree. It was murdered by being dismembered, one branch at a time, each one thrown onto the ground where a human picked it up and sent it through a grinder that broke down the limbs into tiny pieces to be scattered as dust into people's yards.

We stood there speechless, scared, unhappy and in turmoil. The tree branches fell. While it seemed like you couldn't hear the tree crying, it was wailing as every branch fell. It was asking, why it was meeting this fate? Because it couldn't defend itself? Because its crime was to grow so tall as to hit an electrical power line? Because, being as big as it had been, it had produced oxygen for all the creatures around it?

There was no good reason for its death and yet it is dead. Murdered.

What am I going to do about it now? What court of justice can I go to? I know I am going to be punished, and this time, I am willing to be punished. Guess what? You too are going to be punished for the murder of that tree. You and I are both going to be imprisoned. Imprisoned into the looming environmental disaster that we are running into head-on. So what if you and I did not commit the actual murder. We are still responsible for it. One of 'us', 'us' humans committed that murder and we will all pay the price for it.

Are you scared now? I know I am. We need to do something. We need to seek justice. What court should we go to? To the court of life? But, are we willing to listen to what 'life' will have to say to us? Or will we ignore the ruling against us and continue in our horrifying ways? Me and you and all of us humans?

What will we do?