HARDENING OF AMERICA

THE PROPOSAL FOR THE HARDENING OF AMERICA

 

(This is the second in a series on reform of US politics and government. The Overview provides a summary. Specific Actions is more detailed and granular while highlighting categories and changes. Hardening and a New Political Ethos makes the case for significant change and new direction. The author proposes a strategy to meet both the immediate crisis and those anticipated to impact in the near term while continuing to escalate)

 

 

An Overview

         Optimizing the American future requires “hardening.” Drawn from the parlance of military, law enforcement and national security, “target hardening” makes safer, secure, prepared, and harder to damage.        

         American life and government are like those frogs in a slowly heating cauldron. The pattern is ignoring warning, normalizing the aberrant, accommodating progressive weakness, loss of efficiency and excellence, unable to deter or counter destructive forces that are coming at us with escalating power and lethality.                              

         Political culture, health, safety, and economic well-being in America require hardening so the nation is, in fact, beneficial to citizens, assuring them a life and one of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

         Global reality, trends and expectations require “surviving civilizations” to adjust in profound ways, putting emphasis and resources on preparation, response to a matrix of crises, and building facile organizational structure capable to scale response.

         Changing alliances, shifting power, value conflicts i.e. authoritarian vs democratic, climate, wealth disparity, gray zone war fare, radicalization, terrorism and political violence have degrading influence on government capability, individual lives and well-being while also destabilizing geo politics. 

         Adopting the principle of hardening as a point of advocacy and a method of government operation has benefit. A bipartisan movement can develop and frame a message, speaking to voter's perceived needs, then put it in the context of the larger imperatives and goal of hardening. 

This is a threshold moment. As things are intertwined, disruptive factors are integrating into tangles that have become super malevolent forces that political parties and structures of governance have not anticipated and are not prepared for. If there is to be another 250 years of the US, the foundation needs strengthening, aspirational principles must be fitted to meet realities the founders could not conceive and therefore did not anticipate. It is more challenging to stay in power than to arrive. Life, power, stability and freedom remain noble objectives, but maintaining them will be more like battle and different than anything our government has faced in the past. 

Episodes of devastating nature, states of war fare, resource depletion and shortage, economic disruption, human dislocation, loss of confidence in once guiding and stabilizing institutions, cultural division, technological addiction and vulnerability, political failure and the outsized influence of financial power in a collapsing system of self-government are the clarion call to make changes. The present US political system shows almost no awareness of or ability to manage these towering challenges. 

Target hardening is about survival. The hardening this nation requires is root to branch. 

There is a bravado that we live in times of disruption. The driving force of the current apex of America business and enterprise is “break things.”  Well, we have a voice. We have choices aside from willful compliance  and shoulder shrugging. We have the capacity to consider implications and to respond. We need to. 

If in our national history there are times to be smart, now is such a moment. The tools exist; data, analytics, projections, solutions. Existential problems are present and coming at us on the horizon. Survival, and survival with strength and viability demand that we do hard fact analysis, make hard choices, and act to “harden America.”  

The challenges to America are internal as well as in the machinations of external forces. As it has always been, public attention and political culture are the entry points to change and repair. We are in a kind of war, to survive the future.

 

THE CASE AGAINST THE STATUS QUO

 

It is time “level up” in political reality. “Culture war,” ideological zealotry and affectation, “virtue signaling,” get along to go along, follow the money, zero sum game, owning the opposition and such are weak and expended modalities, out of date, ineffective and inadequate. They are tired tactics and more problem than solution. 

The reality coming at us requires a better us, a better system. It is my sense that to break the cycle of diminished capacity that has left us a nation threatened by incompetence, corruption, an impotent congress, and weaking power we need to shift to an ethical, analytic based pragmatism. Hardening.

                  The summary list below is not inclusive but introduces the principle of hardening and itemizes areas of action.

 

         --Citizen needs

                  Security

                           Domestic

                           Asymmetric war / defense economics

                           Infrastructure

                           Transportation

                           Communication

                  Resources (water) (power) (food)

                           Safety

                           Adequacy

                  Stability

                           Economic capacity

                           Affordability

                                    Housing

                                    Availability

                  Medical Care 

                           Costs

                           Availability

                           Staffing

                  Safety

                         Communities

                                    Police

                                    Fire

                                    Specified building codes-geo specific

                         Food

                         Communities

 

                   Emergency Readiness and Repair

         

 

          --Governance

                  Hardening previous “custom” and “tradition” with law

                  Codify independence of DOJ

                  Supreme Court

                           Accountability and Ethics reform

                           Number of Justices

                  National Deficit/Budget Process

                  National Commissions to Investigate:

                           -Extra judicial killings

                           -DOGE impact and Legacy/Restitution

                           -Monetizing of Presidency

                                  Crypto currency and White House 

       White House public statements and investment                             

 

 

SPECIFIC ACTIONS-  A SAMPLER

                           

In paragraphs below we look at a few examples, as a preview of the manner of decisive hardening that time and reality demand of us. 

                           

         Communities in relationship to climate issues; 

Weather-drought, storms, and fires are larger and more devastating. Across the nation are scars, communities struggling to come back, years after floods, tornados, hurricanes and fire storms. Lives disrupted, businesses destroyed, rebuilding delayed or impossible. Regions of the nation resemble war zones and there are more each season. 

         Hardening as proactivity: These are difficult calls and will be unpopular, but they are necessary for survival. There are solutions. 

                  -No build zones:   Regions where insurance data reveal repeated flooding, wind and storm damage, repeated burn zones, earthquake and volcano zones.  Uninsurable, or insurance is limited. If people wish to remain they live at their own peril and risk. No future building and development.

                  -Building Codes and Material adjusted and required by location and geo risk, resource reclamation, suriviability.

                  

                  -Hardening means hard choices and being honest with US citizens.

         Rationale by an example:

How will Governors, mayors, public works directors, city councils and local law enforcement respond when there is inadequate water? Consider just one of thousands of water resources that are on track to fail to supply -The Colorado River.  Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the retention reservoirs are their lowest ever, with area’s that depend on the disappearing water:

         Los Angeles, San Diego, the Inland Empire, Coachella Valley, Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and upstream Denver, Boulder Grand Junction and Pueblo. Population is out of balance with available resources. 

The calculation on eventual failure and shortage assures catastrophic impact. This is merely one region and one resource in a cascading crisis. Hardening is planning and acting now including  control and limiting of building and development.

 

                  Planning and Development Codes and Regulations

                  Specific building materials that provide the greatest protection as well as coding required. A mix of federal and state efforts and assistance to upgrade and retrofit  (In military hardening of sites, access, perimeter barriers and building materials are updated. In some cases adding concrete, blast proof glass, reinforced steel, all to survive.) New construction and building require a similar attention in regards to:

- use of most energy efficiency, fire resistant, quake proof, water saving/recycling systems requiring  materials and codes; 

--as examples-weather/temperature gradient roofs, solar material, geo thermal, water recycling, resource conservation and more.  

This hardening will advance living and commercial design to accommodate continued change, threats and to be sustainable and survivable. (As a side note, warming Europe is particularly problematic because ancient buildings are less amenable to hardening to nature’s change, but the example demonstrates the endemic nature of the work ahead

 

                  Food and Water Safety and Security

                  The then Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee told me “one thing that kept him awake at night” was how easy it would be sideline a military or over take a population by an act as simple as food poisoning. Weaponizing food or water is a threat that is largely ignored. 

Food and water supplies are especially in need of hardening. Often public utilities suffer deferred maintenance and are managed in variety of ways that make them susceptible to either natural or human sabotage. (Iran has already been in local water supplies in recent months.)  Where power and water systems exist  with digital or cyber operations, a national emphasis on hardening would include reducing access, in instances were there are analogue or physical ports, extra precautions need to be taken. Systems need updating and cyber hardening.  The old exterior ports and links are susceptible and need retrofit hardening. Much of our infrastructure is decades old, not defensible, and no one is working to make it better.

 

         National Security and Asymmetric war-A recent lesson 

The Ukraine defense to the Russian invasion has changed the calculus of warfare. Drones have changed the battlefield. 

The ability of the Iranian regime to remain intact and continue to defend and even gain advantage after the massive air campaign of the US and Israel has also changed the calculus. Over the last 4 decades Iranian Revolutionary Guard have planned how to survive and fight back. US policy makers failed to act wisely. Blunders in 21^st Century conflict cannot be tolerated. 

We used to refer to it as low intensity conflict, guerrilla warfare, or insurgency. Asymmetric changes the calculation. 

Asymmetric is a poison word to a large portion of the American defense establishment-Pentagon procurement and defense contractors. This is where $ billions flow to  massive contracts analysts consider “pork.” This is not an argument to stop maintaining a formidable defense posture, though modernization is long overdue. Ukraine, Russia, the Houthis, the IRGC and present tactics and response demonstrate a weapon the cost of a lawnmower can inflict severe damage and even take down a missile taking up to two years to build and costing between $2-4 million. How wise is that equation? Why has such a reality been unchallenged? Successive congresses and White Houses have failed to act.

  Hardening in the US military would include evaluation of how significant resources flow to private industry to deliver systems that were designed for last centuries warfare. The last military strategist to occupy the White House warned of the military-industrial complex. That was 66 years ago. The sentries, elected lawmakers, have failed us.

 

Hardening requires a better and more agency integrated command structure. Survival demands a more intelligent national security apparatus than is presently “disserving” the nation. 

Unapproved and non-strategized criminal military actions and war fighting have permitted critical weapon supplies to dwindle.  Under Trump and Hegseth, arms have been depleted to a dangerous level. We should hope China doesn’t presume that while the Trump criminal regime is tied up with losing a war in Iran, depleting our missile supply, over extending our force profile, festering over the decorating of Washington, they don’t chose to move on Taiwan. 

 

Hardening is also a political notion. This congress fails to assert and use its constitutional power. It is here where the act of hardening motivates reform and perhaps help stimulate a new era of good government.

 

 

HARDENING AND A NEW POLTICIAL ETHOS

 

The status quo is the best argument to make the case for a profound reform in US politics.

It’s time to bring the curtain down on political grifters and the professional political class. As posted previously, the last 50 years in Washington have largely been a failure of advice and consent,  while being a gradual selling of interest to corporate and wealthy donors who “buy” the laws via financial support of politicians. Wise legislation has been achieved sparingly, but it is no longer the raison d’etre  of the legislative branch. Staying in office, enjoying the perks of the club, being in the aristocracy, appear to be priority 1 by the amount of time and effort given to raising money for campaign funds and PACs. 

 

Hardening is putting citizens first. Congressional hardening is being about the needs of the people.

 

Americans should get medical care at a better price. Smaller nations provide quality care, better even in some cases, without the gouging, extraordinary inflationary costs and obstructive insurance hassles and scams that are baked into our for profit system and that send good Doctors to the sidelines and drive citizens crazy. Hardening works here too, but corrupted old ways, old scams, old payouts and payoffs need to be legislated out. Hardening makes the focus care and medicine, not profits.

 

 

CITIZEN NEED IS A TWO-WAY PROPOSITION 

 

Are we ready for practicality and pragmatism instead of cronyism and cash flow? We have become ineffective, our government has become so ensnared in partisanship and feathering of the nest, citizen needs are rarely on the agenda. To paraphrase George Orwell “Power is not a means, it is an end. Today in Washington the object of power is power.”

And in the case of the current crime family in the Whitehouse, power is used to get rich and richer, citizens be damned. Are we better off than we were when this gang took over? They certainly are.

 

         The hardening of America that is a reset of how power and money are used. Business as normal? That brought us the poster child of America in decline, King Tangerine. 

 

         Legislative and Administrative hardening. 

         By now a thinking citizen has concluded that our two and half centuries of tradition and custom need hardening. Legislative remedies are needed to tighten or lock down customs and procedures and prevent the kind of fraud, abuse, criminal intent and just plain rank amateurism that has played out before our eyes since 45 became 47. 

 

 

         THE HARDENING OF CITIZENSHIP

         

America needs to steady itself, to harden our ideals and aspirations.

 

We all have a role to play.

-Citizens must be informed, demanding delivery, demanding changes to keep us safe, to preserve our future, to battle against climate catastrophes, to make adjustment and accommodations that prepare us to survive. 

-Citizens must harden their knowledge base. Citizens need to understand the complexity of international relations, the value of knowledge and facts and practiced at critical reasoning. 

-Citizens must care. We’ve become entirely too frivolous, consumed with non-sense, unable to argue and debate with civility. We are addicted to phones, our attention spans are shrinking, we abuse our children by turning them over to big tech hoping for the best while we watch our nation decay, move in reverse and simply refuse to do the hard work. 

Hardening will be hard work. It is a reappraisal of our American dreams and concluding that enough is enough. American workers deserve a fair wage. Schools should be good at education. Citizens should afford housing, medicine, food on the table and have dreams of a future.

         Hardening means finally reforming political campaigns, exchanging the currency of money for the worth of ideas. Campaign finance reform is a must, or it will continue  to be business as normal. We’ve come to see why our founders were worried about political parties. 

 

         Our next planned political drama will be the two-year circus of   electing a President that inherits a sky rocketing deficit created by Trump’s criminal incompetence, misfeasance and malfeasance, the destabilized power alignments brought on by stupidity, a weakened force profile, a damaged level of respect, a nation divided by intent, unknown levels of threat from mortal enemies, chaos of nature seemingly in revolt, serial climate crisis episodes, devastation by wind, water and fire, the potential of technology on the attack, mass shootings, news deserts, a distracted and decidedly less informed citizenry and a senior dominated governing class without the capacity to look forward and wildly out of touch with common sense or the common man and woman.

         

We need not live in chaos. We need not let disruption and change overwhelm us. But we must make a stand, demand a change, steel up our will and get smart. Demand smart leadership. No empty rhetoric, we need specific solutions, problem solving, pragmatic power. And all of us must be willing to pay the price, accept the changes, so we can prepare for what may be a bewildering future on this planet. We need to harden. 

See you down the trail.

The History of the Future

        We'll share a few moments here on the idea of drought, a drought of spirit and intellect as well as the obvious, depicted here in California's Lake Isabella in Kern County.

        I've been watching Lake Isabella disappear since we became Californians in 2007. These photos were taken recently.

        The stonework in the left of the frame above is the dam.

        There is no recreation in a lake where water levels have dropped to expose the ghost trees that once filled the valley before they were covered. This is an agricultural area too. Similar scenes are visible all over the west.

        We know this, right? It's a global issue. Even if droughts break, it will take years to return to "normal," an idea that is itself probably non-existent. Climate change, for whatever reason, is just that, change!

       From the view of someone who was there to cover the first Earth Day and who has chronicled the ensuing decades, we are not ready for what is coming at us.

        To the northeast of Lake Isabella is a perfect example.

        The great Owens Valley, the deepest in the US, sits at 4-thousand feet rimmed to the east by the Sierra Nevada, west of the White and Inyo Mountains at the western edge of the great basin.

        This vast wilderness is a poster of the moral and ethical drought that can destroy humankind.

        The California Water Wars are legendary, told well in the book and documentary series Cadillac Desert, fictionalized in the film Chinatown, and subject of litigation and battles that go on.

         That island, the remnant of a volcano, sits in the middle of a lake that remains at the middle of the public awareness of theft, deception, chicanery and shortsightedness perpetuated by Los Angeles officials. It began in the late 19th century and to this day LA exists becasue of the water theft.

        Mono Lake, subject of some of the most complex litigation in history, is the largest lake that remains in what once was an Owens Valley flowing with rivers, tributaries, small lakes until LA movers and shakers, destroyed them to feed a real estate boom that led to city of LA we know today. 

        It is a city still dependent on other people's water and those waters like those that feed Phoenix, and so much Southern California, and Arizona, are disappearing.

        Drought should change how we live, but golf courses remain green, builders continue to develop, swimming pools are filled, mindless irrigation continues. When the last drop is used, civilization in those places face a darkness where the drought of spirit, morality and ethics will rise up and create a force that will savage life and society.

        After years of wrangling, Mono Lake is beginning to rise and LA has learned to deal with it. While that may seem to be  good news, LA has instead begun to draw water from subsurface sources in the Owens Valley. 

        Owens Lake is a dry lake bed, as are others. Still the modernity of life in a big city is sucking water from aquifers in a parched area.

        In the early 1900's modern life began the theft. The Paiute tribe and other first citizens had relied on the water for centuries. Settlers had also begun a thriving agriculture that used the accessible water.

        There is no thriving agriculture today. The Paiute and other tribes have watched their paradise be stolen.

        LA is not the only place where this drought of conscience has blinded us to the consequence of our actions. It's a global problem.

        Documentary maker Gabriela Cowperthwaite who produced the expose Blackfish is out with a new investigation that is profoundly shaking up those who have seen it. 

        Based on the seven years of work by Nate Halverson of the Center for Investigative Reporting, it relates how commercial and national interests are buying land with water and food resources around the planet, essentially gaining control. As one analyst wrote "... it is a race against the clock to control food and water..." as climate continues to change humanity. 

       What permits, and what feeds such a sinister effort? A drought of morality and ethics.

       I've tried to avoid head on political analysis for a while. I'm sick of returning to the topic, depressed by the unnecessary division in the US, and anguished about the blatant ignorance and stupidity that is rampant. I've said most of what can be said.

       While we may be appalled and angered by the story of the Owens Valley, and the continued blindness of places like LA, the drought of conscience is apparent in too many places. One place is in the logic of a Republican party that will tolerate a candidate like Herschel Walker, or field candidates who deny the election and who continue to behave as cowards and ethical cripples. 

        We are a people at risk, all of us on this planet. Most of us have a capacity to act. We should.

       See you down the trail. 

       

    

 

Blues-Views-News

 "We all live under the same sky, 

but we don't all have the same horizon"

Konrad Adenauer  

        Coming across that quote this week, I thought we don't all have the same reality either, or language skills. 

       My reality was tweaked when I was in on a brief by Dr. Catherine Marsh former chief scientist for CIA's directorate of Science and Technology and now Director of  IARPA-Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity. IARPA is the Intelligence Community version of DARPA. They are about finding and funding future technologies, systems and frontier new realities. 

       How about filing data using DNA? Maybe advanced polymorphous sequencing to increase security and save space. Server farms are energy hogs, take enormous physical space and have awful carbon footprints. DNA is tiny and tidy.

        

       Tech companies evangelize the Metaverse, maybe just a  buzzword. Still, we've entered a dimension where media called social is a battle ground and war zone that has polarized and  destroyed truth and fact.

        We live with it. Some can't live without it. Some kill themselves because of it. Privacy has vanished because of it.

        Who is doing something about it? 

        Meta data volume builds, and builds, and builds and flows to manipulators.

    

        IARPA is looking to protect algorithms, defend artificial intelligence, counter "deep fakes" and more they can't talk about.

        Imagine walking through any city or village in the world, seeing and hearing all that is going on, but doing it remotely. Our tax dollars are looking for a way.

        Mixed reality.

        

        Some recognize global challenges. 

        Some believe lies while others see the challenge to the American way and they respond.

        

        Words matter more than we may realize.

     A study published by the National Academy of Sciences finds the societal balance between emotion and reason has shifted back to what it was 150 years ago.

    Scholars from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands and Indiana University studied word and language use since 1850. They discovered the shift from reason to emotion began in the 1980's and has accelerated since. 

    Truth, facts, and science have a hard time being heard in a climate where emotion trumps reason. The voices of our better angels have competition.

    Words have power and evoke a vision. 

        Journalist Ari Berman, a voting rights specialist, reported the 48 Senators who voted to reform the filibuster represent 182 million Americans, that is 55% of the population. The 52 Senators who upheld the filibuster represent 148 million Americans, only 45% of the US population.

        Realities?

        After that vote Republicans shook Senator Sinema's hand, glad to have a nominal Democrat join the new Jim Crow movement. Any doubt about that?  Here's a quote from Republican leader Mitch McConnell "African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans."  

        Mitch, you said that out loud.

          Sinema is a play for pay grifter/grafter girl.  She took big money from big pharma and voted against legislation to control medicine costs. She took hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations and voted against increasing their taxes. You have to wonder who got to her on voting rights. 

        Reality: By their actions the Republican party is anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic.  

    As David Remnick wrote, "it has become a party less focused on traditional policy values and more on tribal affiliation and resentment."

     They may have short term gains, but a truth spoken by the greatest Republican consigns them to the ignominy of history, in a pile of those without value, the dishonored. Sinema and Manchin have their own asterisk on that list. 

"We cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves...the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation."

Abraham Lincoln

        

       My bet is Americans will be pushed back, watch rights be stripped away, and oppressed only so long before the great majority rises up against the tyranny of a minority and hand out prostitutes like Sinema and Manchin. 

            There's a lot of dread, justifiable too. Climate, nature and resources are in trouble. It maybe unrecognizable to this generation, but human civilization will find ways to live, adapt, innovate and find destiny.

        As IARPA, DARPA, Bio tech labs, medical discoveries, exploration, discovery and all kindred renaissance thinking invent the future, the human will and spirit will protect itself. 

        It's safe to conclude there will be awful tolls, and maybe so, but I think it would be great to live 50 to 100 years from now, just to see the reality, the fixes, adjustments, innovations and all the new realities we humans create. And, to meet the people as exotically different as we are from those who survived earlier plagues and wars and human catastasis.

        I'm also curious about where artificial reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, genetic design, cyborging, algorithmic cascade, DNA data files, and more take us. 

        But before we go too deeply into the future, I wonder what becomes of the house cleaning mother of five who is exhausting herself with work and worry, trying to keep her family fed and housed. Or the emigres stuck between working to make their dreams reality in the US and an inconsistent and ill defined policy and attitude about immigrants. Or the millions of other working poor facing inflation, already out of control housing costs, and lack of insurance and health security. Or those around the world, victims of war, starvation, authoritarian  regimes. Or those growing numbers of humans displaced by lack of water, resources and a changing climate.

        Wonderous things are indeed coming. I wonder if they will help us with compassion, caring, equity and fairness. It is hard to hear our better angels in the din of word wars and social media combat. Will we listen to each other? To wisdom?

        Do you think we'll learn to take care of the garden?  

        Do you think we'll be closer to having the same horizon?

        Stay safe.

        See you down the trail. 

 

SCENES OF A MERCY KILLING

 

        Up here on the ridge, Top of the World as it is called, we've suffered a loss. It was a mercy killing.

    There's a camaraderie up here, sharing the highest elevation between California Highway 1 and the expanding Pacific ocean. We've all kept an eye on this long time resident, worrying. Death has been stalking the slopes of the Santa Lucia Mountains.

    Drought, exacerbated by climate change, is killing our trees including our rare culture of Monterey Pine.

        Comparing the recent shot above to the 6 year old photo in the header of this post, you can see the deterioration in the regal crown of the hill, a participant in so many of the photos I've shared from up here.        

    She's been ailing, but we've all been trying to will her back to health. These trees have shallow roots, and when Pacific storms gale, they uproot, falling on houses and power lines.

    Life expectancy for the Monterey Pine is 80 to 100 years.

            I asked how old is this tree? The warden of death told me 80.

        The old double trunk Pine stands in the corner of a field, a couple of lots north our home. Someone told the property owner she was a risk, sick and dying and "trouble waiting to happen." So the warden and his crew came back to the ridge. 

        Crows have launched from and rested on these branches for decades. I've see young hawks give flight from them. California Quail have sped around its trunk. Wild turkeys have taken refuge or conducted their warfare in its underbrush. Woodpeckers have been frequent residents. Countless other species of bird have paused there. It is a tower on the ridge.

        She's been an icon of our western vista and one of the elders of the ridge. She and her aviary were here long before us, or the homes that dot the summit, a crown of rock and sandstone.

        Lana and our neighbor Lois, a birder extraordinaire, were talking about how sad it is, how that something that is supposed to be, is gone. I'm ahead of the story.

        What I can do now is show you the end of this long time Cambria dweller. 

        The wardens of it's final day were careful and professional. Their's was to remove a hazard. Ours was to pay respect, to watch to the end.

          Reader alert: what follows is a detailed look at the killing of a tree.

            

 

The manpower was augmented.

Excised limbs had no time to rest on mother earth.

They cut and trimmed higher into the old friend who must have sensed her time was running out as she created a prolific crop of cones.

The vivisection was done with precision.

The next three frames catch the fall.

The men match wits with nature, using calculations to undo what stands tall. 

The machine, the final resolution of this life, is beastfully disrespectful.

As we watched we learned more than the double tree was to die.

As limbs rained down the sky grows somber.

The wardens again play the angles like masters.

Branches that took decades to reach the sky, to offer up new generations of offspring in cones, are now merely brush to be moved.

The mercy kill is still incomplete.

There is no shortage skill on display.

Carefully the denuded co-joined trunks were topped, the lines were set and final cuts were made.

The earth shook and cast up rising clouds when at last she fell.

Even in death, the icon of the hill was formidable.

And then there was only this.

        I'm sorry for the birds and, bobcats, coyote, deer, skunk and raccoons who shared this proud old lady in seeking cover, shade or perhaps enjoying its prominent pose. Even in her decline she was lovely.

Look at what we  miss.

        There is a whole in the sky and an emptiness in our hearts. 

        There is no shortage of life to lament these days, so perhaps our sadness at the end of this tree is silly, but I think not.

        She was part our daily life, a presence, since our arrival in California. I worry she is gone before her time. 

        

        See you down the trail.