Where the tree once was
Sunday (Monday) Scaries: I wanted to photograph this tree for years, and now it's too late
When’s the last time you got emotional about a tree?
I can tell you exactly the last time was for me - March 30th, 2026: the day the tree was gone.
Oh the drama! I can almost feel the small town theater spotlight on me as I bow my head in symbolic reverence. That’s right the tree is gone. What tree you ask? The dead one with 5 bare and dead arms standing confidently among a vast empty-field background that stretched to the horizon. It was art I tell you.
I had this idea for the last couple years to photograph this tree at various times of the day and year when I passed it on the highway (which was often) and put them all together as a collage. Every single time I passed it, sometimes multiple times a day, I’d tell myself “I’ll get it next time”.
And on March 30th, “next time” ceased to exist. My heart froze with regret while driving 65mph. I guess someone bought the land and they flattened everything - living and dead - and now my art no longer exists, save for that sole photo I have at the beginning of this piece with my little crass doodle from memory.
My instinct right now is to express my lamentations with levity and cliche (“you really don’t know what you have til it’s gone”), but there’s a profundity in this otherwise pointless loss, which aches in some only-recently-explored corners of my heart, and I’m left struck at the things I’ve excused or put off until it was too late. Even the small ones.
The 5 deep orange minutes of a once, maybe twice a year beach sunset. The “hi” I never told the girl. The photo that I will never get the chance to take again.
See? This shit got deep. That’s what immediately rolled through my head that day. I’m a sucker for a good cliche, but I think you’d agree that none of them cut it here. This one event painted a poignant picture of promises and possibilities. For the record, to me, alliteration will always cut it.
There is one gleaming light in all of this. The act of noticing is in itself a work of art. The tree was undoubtedly an abysmal, useless eye sore to the new developer, but to me its pointlessness was the point. It was contrasted by fields of farmland - life, sustenance, growth. In that one image was the ebb and flow of it all. Stuff that matters, stuff that doesn’t, all dancing in unison to remind us all where we came from and where we’re going. That is eternally beautiful.
In that one image was what makes life and art worth showing up for. Worth noticing.
And I’ll be damned if I don’t pay that tree my final respects through the written word. It may have died unceremoniously, but it lives on in blog form!
This piece is a day late. My intent was to publish yesterday evening (Sunday evening, that is) because this message is part of my “Sunday Scaries” series, but the message and my writing fell completely flat. I reminded myself that this, too, is art, and I should treat it as such. So instead of publishing for the sake of publishing, I made sure to not only get much clearer on my message, but also take my message to heart:
If you’re lucky, you’ll be presented with “cosmic telegrams” - little messages from the out-there that remind us of the worth in the dross, the beauty in the chaos, and the life among the loss. If you’re smart, you’ll notice and document it.
This week, act on the cosmic telegram. You know the one - the thing you keep passing, keep meaning to capture, keep telling yourself you’ll get to next time. The song you haven’t written. The photo you haven’t taken. The person you keep meaning to call. It doesn’t have to mean anything to anyone else. Exhaust yourself in the pursuit of beauty that matters to you.
Next time isn’t a given.
Stay noticing,
EP
Sunday Scaries is a weekly personal essay series published every Sunday evening at 8:15PM Central. Each piece is an honest look at something I’m working through or experiencing in real life and ends with a challenge for you to take into the week. The whole idea is to take that ever-familiar Sunday evening dread, and turn the energy back into ourselves with intent.
No self-help, no fluff. Just real, and something to do with it.