The Woods of No Return

When I was little we had some woods behind our house. One day I was playing outside with my brother and the neighborhood kids and we saw a girl walk into those woods...but we never saw her come back out. From that time on, those woods were known as "The Woods of No Return". Truth is, the girl was probably just passing through and we either didn't see her come back out of the woods or she was using our yard as a cut-through to the neighborhood behind ours. I've stayed in touch with the neighborhood kids and we get a good chuckle as adults out of our fear of those woods.

Last April, we moved into our new house and one of the things I particularly loved about this house was the private backyard that backs up to 60 acres of undeveloped land, mostly trees and some pastures. We checked on the plans for that land before we bought the house and were told that an elementary school would be built on the land but that construction wouldn't start for another 5 years. Well, that construction started last week, 4 years early according to our understanding! It was so sad for me to sit and watch as the workers cut down tree, after tree, after tree. John David loved watching the men use the big machinery and constantly waved and said hi to them out the window. But I sat and tortured myself by watching them cut down probably close to 200 trees I would guess - huge tall pines and even some hard woods. Those were the hardest to watch. I imagined how long it had taken them to grow so big and they were gone with one grab of this machine. The machine was kind of neat - it grabbed the tree, sawed it and then laid it neatly in a pile.

Before

After
So instead of having our own "Woods of No Return" for John David to play in when he gets older, we now have "Woods that Won't Return". I'm trying to look on the bright side - maybe it will be a great school and John David will be able to walk to school through our backyard. And at least they aren't building a neighboorhood or a shopping center. And maybe, just maybe, they will plant some new trees when they are finished with the building. But for now, I'm grieving the loss of our our privacy and the loss of so many of God's beautiful works of art.