destruction | The Direction of Intention

Choose Your Metaphor [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 7, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

It was demo day in the forest. Even though I intellectually understand habitat restoration initiatives, witnessing the actual process is disturbing. Large rolling-tractor-mulching-mouths pushing down trees and grinding them to pieces nearly as easily as I mow my front lawn. Kerri said, “I can hear the trees screaming.” In a matter of a few minutes, large swaths of the dense forest – trees and all that grow and live beneath them, reduced to “a layer of material.”

A forest fire could not have done a better job though a natural process would not have seemed so brutal.

The sun came out for the first time in many days. We went to our trail to catch our breath and clear our minds. The rapid eradication of the invasive species – and anything else that went into the mechanical mouth – took my breath and filled my mind with questions. I pondered the ubiquitous necessity “to do things fast.” Plow through.

Kerri has lately been cautioning me to go slow. We could – and by all rights should – be running around the farmyard like Chicken Little. The sky isn’t falling but sometimes seems that way. Panic is good for elevating the step count and lowering insurance costs but generally not a good strategy for dealing with…anything. Rather than cluck, react and put out fires, we are sitting steadfast in our fire. We are making choices. One step, one day at a time. One step on the trail. And another. Presence.

It was when we looped away from the machinery and screaming trees that I realized – beyond the obvious – why I found this destruction so disturbing. It was a mirror of our lives. A metaphor that cut too close to home. And, it was happening in the place where we always go to sort our challenges and restore our peace-of-mind.

And so, we walked the loop again. This time, in addition to the decimation, I saw space. I could see through what was previously a dense thicket. Had we chosen to do so we could have walked into areas that last week were impenetrable. Another metaphor, more palatable. Devastation is not an end. It is a step on the trail, a moment in time. A color on the palette of life (I could go on but I won’t). I decided that I was spacious enough to hold and appreciate two metaphors. Hope. Clear seeing. New perspective. and, the shock of rapid erasure of the woods – of life – as we knew it.

Through the creak of machinery, the buzz of chainsaws, the screaming of trees and shouting of work crews, I glimpsed some distant hope. The area of the forest eradicated last year for habitat restoration is now showing signs of renewal. The same must be true for us.

Kerri gasped. A juvenile eagle perched high in the branches of a native white oak. A stalwart and steady witness to the sudden ravages. “Beautiful,” we whispered simultaneously.

read Kerri’s blogpost about TREADS

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buymeacoffee is a hardy sprout bursting through the crusty soil and reaching for the energy and life of the sun.

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Metaphor, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, destruction, devastation, eradication, forest, habitat, habitat restoration, hope, invasive species, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, metaphor, natural process, panic, peace of mind, perspective, presence, renewal, restoration, stalwart, steadfast, story, studio melange, the melange, woods | 3 Comments »

Check Your Reality [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 21, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

We parked the truck in the Kemper Center lot, far enough from the shore not to be hit by the flying debris, the chunks of seawall and pavement being hurtled from the impact of the waves. Kerri has lived here for over 30 years, “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she repeated as a towering wave engulfed the gazebo, took down a piece of the wall of the art center, a hunk of coastline disappeared.

Later, after the storm, we went back. Trees were down, encased in ice. Huge sections of the walking path were shattered and tossed into the flooded mess of the parking lot behind the center. Walking was treacherous. Like the trees, the ground, the rocks, the destruction was coated in a thick layer of ice. It was beautiful and inconceivable.

Words mask all manner of reality. We have a word, nature, that can’t even begin to touch the magnitude, the power of where it points. Mother Nature. I have been thrown out of bed in an earthquake that brought down freeways like they were so much satin ribbon. Go to Pompeii or Herculeneum, visit Mt. Saint Helens, watch with disbelief any of the news footage of any one of the tsunamis that have wiped communities off the map. Wrap your mind around it, if you can.

We are cavalier in our conversations about global warming. We impact, we do not command. We reduce it to questions of business, of protecting the beef industry. Which economy will suffer most? We make up these strangely insignificant divisions. We imagine that we are the center, holding all the controls. We imagine that it is all about us. So small, a chihuahua yipping at a forest fire.

Sitting in the truck, feeling the boom of the waves in my chest as they tore off chunks of the shore, I felt tiny. I remembered a snippet of film I saw about a man who wore a superhero suit and stood in the face of an oncoming storm. He flexed and stomped and raged for the camera. And then the storm hit. The best he could do was run for his life.

aftermath copy

read Kerri’s blog post about THE STORM

ice ©️ 2020 kerri sherwood

for prints of “ice” go here

Filed under: Awakening, Energy, Language, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: climate change, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, destruction, global warming, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, nature, power, storm | Leave a comment »

Sit In It And Listen [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on October 23, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

megaphones copy

When the world seems upside down – as it does often these days – we retreat to one of our favorite sanctuaries, a place of quiet where we can walk for an hour or so beyond the noise and division of the day. Our beloved Bristol Woods.

A few weeks ago, we retreated to the woods and came upon two curiosities. First, something that looked like a large wooden dunce cap, like some bratty giant was made to sit in the corner for disrupting class and, after his punishment, tossed his cap into the woods. We climbed in it and wriggled through it. We sat in it and absorbed the autumn sun. Napping in the dunce cap, we made up outlandish stories about what it could possibly be and how it came to be in our woods. If not a dunce cap then certainly it was a megaphone of epic proportions!

And, it turns out that we were right. The naturalist told us at the nature center it is a nature megaphone. Sit in it and it amplifies the forest sounds: leaves rustling, squirrels scampering, trees swaying, branches clicking, chipmunks darting. Disgruntled, the naturalist said, “They moved it so it points toward the highway and now it mostly amplifies the road noise. There couldn’t be a worse spot for it!”

Curiosity #2. Why would they move the megaphone to the worst spot? To a place where it amplifies road noise instead of the sounds of nature as intended?

Pocking our route through the woods we saw trees marked with red tape. Red and green flags were planted in a line cutting across the woods. Occasionally, trees were marked with ‘caution’ tape. “I think they’re going to tear down the woods,” Kerri sighed. Not possible, I thought. It’s land set aside for sanctuary. It’s written into their slogan: ‘Putting People In Touch With Nature.’

But, it turns out that Kerri was right. An aerial adventure park is coming soon. “The board says it will bring more people -what the means is more revenue – to the woods,” says the naturalist, her face turning red.”Does it make any sense to tear down the woods to bring more people to the woods?” she asks. “It has nothing to do with the woods. Do they think we’re idiots? It’s all about the money.”

And, it turns out I was right, too. Well, I was partially right. A bratty giant is disrupting the classroom but instead of being made to sit in the corner and consider the ramifications of his actions, he is quite simply removing the classroom. No self-reflection required. He will eliminate Bristol’s reason for being. Horatio jumped into my mind with a simple and sad statement, “It’s all upside down,” he said. “If it doesn’t make money, we don’t value it.”

I didn’t say it. Wittingly or unwittingly, the megaphone is now a metaphor. It is in the perfect place to amplify what is now most valuable in our very upside-down world.

read Kerri’s blog post about BRISTOL WOODS