Epicenter

It’s 5 am – maybe no one felt it but me – in my own Epicenter of my own quaking world.

My house is crumbling at its very foundation. Or my boiler is exploding. My boiler is exploding – those HVAC guys yesterday were right, said it needed to be replaced – 35 years old and way past its due. Could it explode, in summer? Shit, I’ll never make that bus to the Peace Corps now. I'll be dealing with the aftermath, the ever-expanding transition to-do list. No, the tree removal is starting – but this early? The poor old elms are coming down – and the massive trucks are rumbling down Park and getting into position.

Amazing what can swirl through the mind in the 10 seconds it takes for the tremors to stop.

They stopped. Surely someone else felt that. No one in bed next to me to confirm or deny, for better or for worse. I text Jake: Earthquake? I text Karin: Did you feel that? No response, too early. A dream image pops into my head: her parents, my legs, a syringe stabbing into the flesh behind my knee. Painful. Thankfully it fades as I try to make it out.

I crawl across my bed to the window: all’s quiet down below. The sky behind the trees is slate blue. The cars are all lined up neat as Matchboxes.

The trees are coming down today.

I Google ‘earthquake Washington dc July 16 5 am’ – I get back hits on Haiti. It’s been exactly 6 months and 2 days since their disaster - still suffering. I track ball around – meetings at the Press Club today on the Haiti quake. That was a 7.0.

What about mine?

The trees are coming down today. No one’s moved their cars.

I’m angry at this city for letting this happen. I feel the heat rising on my skin and throw-off the sheet. They could have treated the trees last year, two years ago; but instead they put all their energy into chopping. And three more old ones are being hacked to the ground today.

Yesterday, finally, after a year of waiting, then two months of panicked bitching, they injected the remaining trees, including the one in front of my house, a 45-year old – to try to save them. But I have a bad feeling – an entire limb of mine is dead and the leaves are brown and crumpled and falling from the sky, dropping the disease everywhere. Why did they let this happen?

Why did I?

Finally, 2 months ago, I panicked and called a block meeting. But it may be too late.

Chopping is easier than care and feeding. Or maybe it's like some treeman to me: just the cycle of life.

But I'm not ready to let go yet. I say...

> Somebody should be minding the store – our canopy of trees – their beauty, age, grace, carbon-dioxide, cool green shade.

> Instead of riding around on sleek Seguays with Thinkpads and fancy GPS software that maps our dwindling urban forest.

> Do something.

> People drive our majestic block, a cross-town thoroughfare – a gateway to Rock Creek Park on the NW corner of Mount Pleasant. People walk dogs and push strollers beneath our canopy – cyclists and runners zoom by.

> Now it’s becoming barren – the rowhouses on the hill exposed, blazing in the sun, naked.

> It’s been two years since the first elm came down on our block – and Dutch Elm disease has been a known killer for ages – a non-profit grew up in our city, Casey Trees, to address just this problem.

> Do something. Last year they came to treat and instead they chopped. Why, we don't understand.

> So as citizens, we have to watch and push, push, nag, call, meet, call, check, nag, worry, get pissed OFF.

> And finally they arrive and inject - some of the wrong trees - and leave the stumps to rot and spread their disease.

> With all this bumbling I begin to see: the somebody that should be minding the store is ME.

Now I wait for the trucks to come to begin their euthanasia – removing the disease limb by limb – on lower Park Road – the epicenter of my world.

Ah, the radio report. It was a quake, not the boiler or the trucks, or the worries in my head – but a 5.3.

There's a man in a tree with a chain saw. Now I hear the mulching machines sucking in the limbs and spitting them out as dust.