In the dream, Emily typed the heading, “For Chris: Preservation of open space” and the computer screen dissolved into the high meadow. Giant chainsaws ripped into a stand of maples and white birch and lopped off their branches. Dynamite blasted away at their stumps. Emily called out, but no one heard. Jumbo threshing machines ground the limbs into sawdust as flatbed trucks carted the strapped trunks away like so many wooden corpses. An excavator shot steel spikes into the ground, shattering the bedrock. Mourning doves scurried away from their nesting sites and white-tailed deer scampered in all directions.
Emily clicked away at the delete key but there was no response.
Hovering overhead, a hawk, with its rusty chest and long tail, flew lazily over the rising smoke, eyes closed. The secon
