#that house has never not been terrorized and dampened by male depravity.

[swagging-back-to]

some christians bought the 200 year old house across the street to turn it into a bible school.

there was a beautiful 200 yo apple tree right in the front yard. I swang in that tree growing up. I would look out at it every day and just admire it.

they cut it down and uprooted it their first week here to make A PARKINGLOT. it genuinely made me sick and everytime i look out there i feel the same way.

i have wished nothing but painful death for them every day since! :)

So I mentioned I find men bad for the ecosystem: this is what inspired it.

I’ve been exploring a local forest; it’s filled with edible plants, herbs, flowers, berries, medicinal plants and chestnut trees, I would already call it a food forest. I tried to reach all the edges of the forest, to figure out how to never get lost in it. And I stumbled upon several places where the forest has been destroyed.

There are ethical and responsible practices of cutting old, dry and already-rotten trees and using them for firewood or as a resource; this was not it. Healthy trees were cut down from an entire area, vegetation around them ran over by heavy machinery that left traces of dense, un-growable soil. The trees weren’t even picked up – most of them were left lying over the hills, making it almost impossible to walk by foot. It seemed as if the only purpose was to clear out the area, possibly for new power lines. It left a path of destruction over the forest, so big it made me sick to be there. It smelled like death, all the green was gone. It felt like some sort of a monster went on a rampage there, and left a path of absolute ruin behind. It hurt to see it. I got out of there as soon as I could.

Related to this story, there’s a big, gorgeous elderberry plant next to the building I live in. It’s grown luxuriously over some abandoned land, providing a great view of beauty, hiding the overgrown mess behind it, spreading amazing smell of elderflower thru the air. It only started flowering few days ago, and I was admiring her every day, smelling the flowers, considering if I should make a syrup from them, or wait until the berries are ready and make medicine.

Yesterday evening, I went outside, and there were two men with chainsaws, and something was missing. I stopped my bike and stared in shock. That entire huge elderberry was cut down to nothing. It was erased from existence in those few hours I wasn’t looking. The soil it was growing on is now visibly uneven, house ruins and mess of thorns behind it fully in view. No sweet smell distracting from the stink of the garbage containers. No shade from the hot sun. The men already attacking a new set of plants.

I do want to go on a rant over how intensely valuable trees and forest life and elderberry plants are, especially now, but, instead I want to point out, that this is what I mean when I say men are bad for the ecosystem. They’ve assumed both ownership and authority and permission to destroy any piece of land, any life-giving plant. They’ve created machines that don’t consider what they’re leaving behind, and they feel it their right to use them however they see fit.

But we live here too. We need the forest, the soft undamaged soil, our big elderberry plants. We don’t benefit from ruined, barren land like they do. This is damage to our ecosystem, but we’re supposed to assume it’s all somehow beneficial to us – it’s only beneficial to those who get paid to do it and those who paid for it to be done for their own purposes. We are poorer for having parts of our forest destroyed. This city is poorer for having one gorgeous, huge elderberry plant less. We do not have excess of greenery, we do not have excess of beauty, oxygen, shade, view, scent, flowers or medicine that the plant was giving us. That plant was only bringing good to us all. The forest too.

I can’t move soon enough to a place where women have both full ownership, and full control over the land. Whatever we do, I know it won’t be this. I know we won’t leave path of destruction in the forests. We won’t cover the land in asphalt so that the trees can’t grow. We won’t force heavy machinery on soft, herb-filled forest soil. We won’t cut down our beautiful, invaluable elderberry plants.