Pine Hollow Road is a narrow two-lane stretch that winds through the foothills. It already makes me uneasy in bad weather, when visibility drops and the turns seem to tighten. That afternoon the sky was perfectly clear—bright blue, birds probably chirping somewhere in the trees, the kind of day that Colorado specializes in. But my stomach felt like it had folded in on itself.
The moment I turned onto my property road, I knew something was wrong before I even saw the specific problem.
Landscapes feel different when something old disappears. It’s like when you take a picture off the wall and can still see the clean square where it used to hang—a ghost of presence, an absence so obvious that it becomes the focal point of the entire room.
The six sycamore trees along the eastern edge of my land were gone.
What I Found When I Got Home
Not damaged by wind. Not trimmed or pruned or partially cut back.
