Today was another one of those days where I felt completely unmotivated to write, until I took a walk with my mom to her farm.
There used to be a forest along the path to my mom’s farm. The forest was lush, full and alive. It was thick with wild fruits, and birds, so many birds. Each time we passed through, the breeze there felt completely different there. It was fresher and cooler and to me, there was something sacred about the place. I always felt some sort of peace whenever I walked by.
Also, the sounds that came from the forest stayed with me the most. Especially the layers of birdsong that echoed from tall trees. I never once stepped into that forest, I honestly didn’t need to. Loving it from a distance was enough. I also admired that the community let it remain untouched, resisting the urge to turn it into “something useful,” as people often say when they mean something profitable. But usefulness, I’ve come to realize, is often measured without care.
When we walked by, I noticed the land was open and sunlight now passed through easily. Then I saw the excavators that were scattered about so I asked questions and my mom said the government noticed the land. And like many beautiful things, it didn’t stay unnoticed for long.
My sacred forest was gone or at least, the version of it I knew. My mom said the community was paid well. And they accepted the offer without resistance, or arguments because the money was huge.
Now, the land is being excavated. The trees, those tall, ancient witnesses, have been cut down. The ground has been opened up, disturbed, and of course forced into something else entirely. A nature that once breathed now feels silenced.
And standing there, looking at what remained, something in me ached terribly. How easily we trade beauty for development. How quickly we forget that the earth is not just land, it is life. Life that holds stories, shelter, breath. And yet, we keep taking from it, reshaping it, wounding it, as though it cannot feel. But it does. In ways we may never fully understand.
Why can’t we just let the earth breathe? Why can’t we soothe it instead of constantly causing it pain?
I didn’t say much as we walked on, I couldn't find my voice because of the fear that now shakes me. When everything has been brought to ruins, and changed to infrastructures, what will we be left with? Will we survive it?
Some places leave an imprint on you, and even when they’re gone, the memory of what they were lingers painfully.
Perhaps that’s why I’m writing this. Because even if the forest is gone, it deserves to be remembered, maybe not as ruins, but as something once whole, alive and beautiful.
If we learn to remember better, we might learn to do better.
images are mine and were taken by me.