Ryder, I know exactly what you are talking about. There are several thousand acres across the road from me that I do not own. How I wish I did own it. It has many acres of woods, but mostly crop land. The field directly in front of me has about 70 acres of crops, but is bordered by woods filled with dogwoods, redbuds, beech, hickory and oaks. No houses around. I love to go out and see the seasons change along the woods. One morning I came in from work, I saw machinery being unloaded for cutting trees. I felt like I had been told that I had an incurable disease. I could hear the saws cutting and I could see the machinery bringing the trees to the edge of the road. Each morning I dreaded coming home to see what they destroyed. I had trouble sleeping too. I then thought about how I had made fun of tree huggers. I realized that these people probably lived and were raised around the forests and loved driving home down the roads covered by the canopy of hardwoods. Then someone comes along that doesn't give a damn about what everyone loved about the area. They purchase the land and strip it. My older brother used to go on about how people over react to things such as tree huggers. He is a "Ditto Head". When I called to tell him that they were cutting the trees in the woods, I thought he was going to cry. He used to make fun of the people trying to protect the "Spotted Owl." After thinking about it, I have a feeling that if they latched on to something like the Spotted Owl, it saved the forest. I would love to have seen a Spotted Owl or Snail Darter with legs in the woods. Heck, even Elvis!! I should have told them I saw a Dodo bird in there. The woods were not stripped out as bad as I thought. Now, it looks like a lot has filled back in, but I still don't want to go into the woods to see what was taken out. They do not clean up behind themselves, but the new growth just covers it up.
