Farewell, old friend

Today the wind is howling through central Oregon. It's the kind of wind that goes beyond irritating. Its scary! I drove up to feed my horses in Camp Sherman, noticing the trees waving around on both sides of the road, trying to imagine what my reactions should be if this one or that plunged to the ground. Would I stop in time? Would we get squished? Would I survive if the tree hit the back part of my van? What about Murphy, my dog?

I turned off my imagination and turned up K-Love, and no trees fell.

This afternoon I went into town and one of my errands was to drop off a nomination for an urban tree award that the City of Sisters is offering. I was going to nominate a huge old juniper that towered over our Park Place neighborhood. The developers left it in the middle of the road, and every time I'd look toward the mountains, the sentinel tree was standing firm and tall.

I drove past to look at it once more before dropping off the nomination...and all that's left of it is one large branch and the trunk! The wind blew the top out of it - today.




So now I'm regretting that I never took any "before" photos of our woody neighbor. And it turns out the city won't consider a posthumous award.

Mother Nature is just not nice sometimes.