Paloweena Forest Gone

“ Well, I suppose nothing is meant to last forever. We have to make room for other people. It’s a wheel. You get on, you have to go to the end. And then somebody has the same opportunity to go to the end and so on.”

- Vivian Maier

I drove past this spot yesterday and noticed that this stand of matchbook trees was gone.  Some of the trunks were stacked up in a huge pile and I have no idea at all at what was growing in neat rows.   

This particular stand of Paloweena Trees had been a magnet for photographers for a while now.  Planted for harvesting in perfect rows.  

We met the owner one day.  Kylee fronted him about using it for her film.  The owner was very obliging, particularly considering that every day people trespassed on his property to get photographs of it.   

He said the stand wasn’t as valuable as he expected, because they hadn’t grown as straight as they could have.   

One of the beautiful features of these trees is the huge lilac trumpet flowers that adorn them in spring.   

Despite being grown for harvesting I was sad at their end.  As I always am.  They were a family.  All gone in a few days no doubt. One day when we figure out how they communicate as a community we may shift our feelings for them.  They do live as a community, communicating between each other.  This seems to be a little known fact  

Long after many animals are extinct trees will still be providing us with fresh oxygen and food.  We owe our lives to them.   

Sometimes our photographs serve as important documents of things past.  This photograph does now.  Moments in time, we capture fleeting moments and live them as memories Andrew Smallman said to me last night.  How true this is for me.

Paloweena Forest.  Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2019