The ribbons tell the story

Anyone who is lucky enough to travel the byways and back roads of GroveAtopia has seen them.   Even though you are overwhelmed by the beauty that surrounds you along nearly every road in GroveAtopia, you can't help but notice them.  You see them around nearly every turn.  

There are ribbons wrapped around the trees.  

Sometimes the ribbons are blue.  Sometimes red.  I've also seen pink, orange and white ones.  I even saw a checkered one.  

Sometimes there is only one ribbon.  Sometimes there are several of the same color wrapped around a single tree. Other times there are several different colored ribbons wrapped around the same tree.  

What do these ribbons mean?   Only the forest workers know for sure.  The rest of us can only speculate.   

I used to think that a colored ribbon around a tree automatically meant "cut it down."  Actually, I think a lot of the time it does.  

So a tree with two different colored ribbons around it is really doomed.   Maybe the pink ribbon  means "cut it down" and the blue one means "then shred what's left into a million pieces and make sure there is no sign a tree was ever here." 

That's what I was thinking when I stopped to have a closer look at the two orange ribbons wrapped around the tree in the picture.  Whatever an orange ribbon means for a tree, this one had a serious case of it.  

But then, as I moved closer I saw words on the ribbon.  And they said "wildlife tree."

Oh!  Now that is a different matter.  This tree is not doomed.   In fact it must be doubly important to wildlife because it has two ribbons.   It never occurred to me that these ribbons could mean good news.

However, just because one ribbon bears good news, don't go thinking they all do.  Look at this ribbon.

It says "KILLER TREE."  Yikes!  There is even a skull and cross bones on the side of the ribbon you can't see.  

I can't even imagine what this tree has done to be designated a killer tree.   I didn't know trees could kill anything.  Unless they fall on someone.  

Maybe this tree told someone it was just about ready to fall over, but it couldn't predict when, so just to be safe it asked us to call it a killer tree so people would stay away from it.  It asked us to add the skull and cross bones for good measure.  That tree is actually doing us a favor and trying to protect us!

But I still think ribbons around our trees usually mean that the area will soon look like it does in this picture.

We GroveAtopians are familiar with scenes like this.   We see them all the time.  Sometimes they appear suddenly in the distance, forever changing a familiar vista.   Sometimes they occur right up the road from where you live and you can only be thankful that it's not in your plain sight every day.   

But it's when we drive our back roads that we know we will see them.  Still, as we embark on our journey we may have forgotten a little so the first scene we encounter always takes us aback.  That's because it is in such stark contrast to the overwhelming beauty we've just passed through.

It's as if the further back in the woods we go, the more often we encounter these scenes.  

I guess the forest workers get used to it, but I don't think I ever will.