ERASURE: On the Destruction of Familiar Trees

FXBG Advance 7/7/26 Morning Read

By Ranjit Singh, ADVANCE ENVIRONMENTAL COLUMNIST

One of our Stafford County neighbors/Photos by Ranjit Singh

Swatches of forest disappear in Stafford County, Virginia every day. I’ve written about this before, including how disorienting the rapid destruction is to many residents. Bulldozers clear away all vegetation and even the soil underneath, leaving the yellow earth scarred and infertile. Few places seem immune. Just a few years after my wife and I bought our house, the entire forest backing our lot was removed, leaving us atop a windy hill.

Last week, a nearby copse of trees that I’ve admired for decades was unceremoniously scraped away for new homes “starting in the mid-500s.” I have long known these trees were vulnerable, surrounded by older houses. But the act itself came as a shock. Especially since this is still early summer and the height of the nesting season. The trees’ sudden erasure sent me back to an ancient puzzle:

What are my kindred members of humanity thinking?

***

Two years ago, a local developer wanted to build a village-style retirement community of 141 new homes on Leeland Road, which runs a mile or so up Potomac Creek from Unicorn Farm, our family home. This proposed subdivision would destroy the 53-acre Clift Farm, a graceful expanse of rolling fields touching the old 173-acre farm of Jean Ewalt, a wildlife rehabilitator, and her husband Edgar, both of whom had passed away. These were people I had known.

To build the retirement community, the developer needed Stafford County to re-zone the farmland from A-1 Agricultural to a new designation: R-2 Urban Medium Density Housing. An online petition opposing the change was created by local residents. Petitioners decried the loss of open space and green vistas that attracted them here, and worried about the traffic that would come. Others spoke of Clift Farm’s notable history; the entire area was a Union Army campsite during the Civil War, and Stoneman’s Switch, a strategic railroad junction, ran just alongside. Abraham Lincoln walked here.

For the most part, the opposition to the retirement community was a classic case of NIMBY politics—Not in My Back Yard. Most petitioners arrived here less than 20 years ago. They occupy newly built, two-story McMansion houses, and park their commuter cars along white curbs in cul-de-sacs built over a walnut orchard now lost to time.

I felt for them, though. Not in my backyard, either. When the petition leader called me for support, I gave him what ammo I had—an online article I wrote on how such housing projects are hurting the water quality of Potomac Creek, which lay within about 1,000 feet of the proposed community—and I agreed to speak at an upcoming county planning meeting.

A few weeks later, I chatted about the coming development with my anthropologist friend Brad, an active citizen of the local Patawomeck tribe. Brad had just finished discussing Indigenous rights with students in my undergraduate seminar. (Afterward, a confused student asks me if Brad is Canadian. His broad waterman’s accent—“about” is “abowt”—is rarely heard these days.)

Brad agreed then that the retirement community wouldn’t be stopped. That wasn’t the Stafford County way. Like me, he worried about the housing development’s impact on the creek, which runs through the heart of his tribe’s ancestral homelands. Increased lawn fertilizers and road run-off will further harm water quality. Brad knew, too, that only minimal cultural resource surveying had been done. He suspected buried sites of historic tribal settlements would be destroyed and associated artifacts lost forever. He informed me of a massive new warehouse, further up Potomac Creek across Route 1, that was also in the planning stages. There, evidence of human settlement had been found (including tell-tale fluted Clovis points) dating back to the earliest Paleoindian era, ten thousand years ago or more. Building the new retirement community would erase any record of uncounted humans who once lived beside the creek.

Ultimately, though, the petitioners succeeded in halting the developer’s plan. The property will become a three-story school instead—that’s less likely to harm property values. Trees and animals will still die, though. Most people won’t notice.

But why are we okay with the erasure of our own kind, I wonder? Especially here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, which prides itself as “The Birthplace of the Nation” and “Mother of Presidents”? As the country prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, Virginia’s clever new marketing campaign can credibly boast: “America. Made in Virginia.”

When considering the wounded land around Potomac Creek, I often struggle to understand the minds of others. It’s a global concern capable of uniting (and occasionally unifying) the social and natural sciences.

I once tried to glean the thoughts of a visiting migratory bird through science and sheer imagination. I read a number of peer-reviewed studies about the migratory impulse. I cannot say that I succeeded with any confidence. My working assumption was that interiority is by definition hidden, but also universal—or something like that.

Then, last summer, standing quietly in the woods, I watched a red-headed woodpecker feed in the bark of a tree several feet over my head. We both paused to exchange glances.

The little bird saw me and wondered something, as did I. A moment of mutual regard; I felt illumined, and a little startled.

I knew for that instant what it was thinking about: it was thinking about me. A modest but solid insight. Then, as the bird continued its feeding with only a hop or two sideways, I knew, too, that the woodpecker thought rather little of me, despite my species’ awesome supremacy. But I could only make guesses why.

Maybe we shouldn’t mirror-image across species. Assuming a muskrat or owl must think as we do—how immodest is that? Perhaps my whole approach has been wrong. Of course, we’re all creatures of nature, fated to act like the animals we are. But differences among species must matter, too, even in an instant of mutual recognition.

Returning my attention to those of my own species, though, I felt the task of discovery has to be easier.

How do humans understand the land they live on? Well, dead people leave records and material artifacts or write books. Ideas and emotions have archaeologies for us to unpack. An uncovered cache of worn Clovis points clearly says someone viewed this as a good place to find food. A bone flute bespeaks rituals or play. Empathy isn’t such an abstraction here among our own; less brute imagination is needed to understand what the dead were thinking. Living humans, too, may tell you directly and in your own language how they feel about a place, as well as about those who came before us.

But, as I had hoped with the birds, you need first to become a stalker of people. Approach quietly. Heighten your senses. Follow them around, perhaps.

The person who pays for the vanquishing bulldozer, and the environmentalist who mourns what is to be forever lost—here, too, among ourselves, we must seek illuminating moments of mutual regard. Perhaps then we can fathom how the other views the land.

But, for the moment at least, I remain mystified by why we hold such views.

***

Ranjit Singh teaches in the Department of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Mary Washington. He’s also an active environmentalist. His “No Lines in Nature” Substack blends history, science, and philosophy to explore our relationship with the natural world. You can find it HERE, with an earlier version of this essay.