Change: it is tough. Property changes hands and things don’t look the same anymore. It had to be and yet…

This feeling of loss persists. The finality of it. The chopping down of trees. He takes long orchard walks and tries to reconcile the new with the old. The missing walnut trees were planted the year he was born. They were nurtured by his parents just like he was. Those deciduous trees: they were like friends bringing forth gifts harvest to harvest.

And now they’re gone.

He takes pictures in the orchard. Looking down he shows the cracked earth. Dry, pained, in need of sustenance. A common site around here.

The orchard has been replanted. Almonds now. We were hoping for pomegranites – so biblical, so strange. But the new owner has planted almonds and "his" orchard is covered in a new geometry of the fledgling starts of white-taped baby trees.

He takes his tripod, his camera. It’s his way of coming to terms — facing — what he doesn’t want to see.

The land is someone else’s but it will continue to grow. Someone else will nurture the trees, the trees that were planted the year he was born. And they will bring forth gifts…

But for someone else. Not he.