They Took All the Trees

We used to have this view from the living room window in our Welsh hillside home.

It is, as they say, a view to die for and a real feature of our home.  Views from every window, the countryside lush and green or stark and white in Winter.  A view to drink in, one that stops you in your tracks.

I used to imagine the thousands of lives going on in the branches of the trees and bushes that lined the railway line.  I watched in the dusk of the evening as a white owl used to swoop across the field diving low to pick up some small creature trying desperately to run for cover.  The sheep would lie in the cooling shade offered by the trees and forage for tasty bits to supplement their grassy diet.

Beyond the trees and bushes I would see glimpses as trains travelled down the track and each morning and each evening I would see the same small group of water birds flying down and then up the river.  

It's always the way that when you leave somewhere and come back to it at a later date you notice more than if you are there day in day out.

But I didn't expect to come back to this.

Last time I was here ... only just over a week ago ... they were busy thinning out the trees along the train track, some big wig has obviously decided they might as well go the whole hog and remove virtually all the trees and bushes.

Now the trains whizz by noisily, there are fewer birds .... they have nothing to land on, my mind can't wander to the possibility of baby birds in nests and thousands of insects and small creatures making a life for themselves in their woodland homes ... they are all gone.

No wonder then that this song has been playing out in my head since the moment I first took in our new non-improved view.

Sue xx