- When they put up yellow caution tape around your favorite nature spot what do you do?
- When the city engineers say that cutting the tree down is necessary for repairing the sewer what do you do?
- When no one in your neighborhood knows that their favorite tree is about to get cut down what do you do?
In October of 2024 I sat in the shade of one of San Diego’s most outstanding citizens. This individual who had given so much to the city over hundreds of years was about to be killed because it was the least expensive option the engineers could come up with. Brightly colored tape and survey flags, flapped in the wind, plastic harbingers of ecological destruction and bureaucratic inevitability. I ducked under the tape to get a closer look at the tree.
Three visits to this tree in the fall of 2024 gave me time to paint, to observe, to count birds, to hear the opinions of dozens of local residents. I thought that I was writing the obituary for this tree and making the last paintings of it before the heavy machinery moved in. I donated my pages and paintings of the tree to the community archives so there would at least be a record of this special organism.
Do you think nature journaling leads to action? Can it really help save the environment when there is so much momentum to cut everything down and pave it over? Or is nature journaling just a way to write an obituary for this tree and process ecological grief?
Happy ending?
Months later, when I returned to San Diego, I was afraid to investigate what had happened to the tree. I was avoiding the truth and fearing the worst. That’s how this story always unfolds right? The tree always gets cut down right?
To my surprise, I received a message from the chairperson of the Friends of Tecolote Canyon. He told me that the city had adjusted it’s plans and the tree had been spared! He said that my video helped make a difference.
