It Broke Me When My Neighbor Cut Down His Trees

There is a steep hill directly across the street from my house. High and narrow, it stands about 75 feet tall. The road stretches like a dark ribbon between where my yard stops and the hill begins. The hill is too precarious to build anything on. For the twenty-two years that I’ve been in this house, the hill and its riot of tall pines have been my only facing neighbor. Over the years, four or five pines have come down, primarily during storms. They generally fall on the road or the power lines at the bottom of the hill. Once, the tip of a pine landed on my neighbor’s car, doing a bit of damage. Another time, a limb took out my neighbor’s mailbox, but left mine unscathed. I’ve never been worried that a tree will fall on my house. My husband (who has much better depth perception than I do), has assured me a dozen times that none of the trees, even the tallest ones, could reach the house. “You might lose those lawn chairs though,” he said once, pointing to the trio of chairs I’d set up beneath our catalpa tree. “I could live with that,” I’d replied. As it turns out, there was someone who was worried about the trees — the owner of the property. His house is located on the other side of the hill. I didn’t know he’d been watching the pines sway and bend, driven to distraction by the thought of a tree doing severe damage to someone’s property or, worse, causing physical harm. When he stopped by my house on a Friday in March 2018, and told me a crew would be arriving to remove four or five trees the next morning, I’d simply nodded, thanking him for the heads up. <a href="https://medium.com/the-memoirist/it-broke-me-when-my-neighbor-cut-down-his-trees-712f75d38f23">Read More</a>