Just got back from a walk around my neighborhood on yet another radically gorgeous day. After a particularly wintry winter, this premature spring seems especially… special. Doesn’t it?

First, let me just say this: Pigeon Point is not everybody’s idea of the “perfect neighborhood.” But it is mine. Always has been. I longed to live here even before I knew it was a possibility. When some friends of ours decided to move to New Zealand suddenly, and needed to sell their house here quickly – just when we were looking – it seemed like kismet. (Especially since our credit was practically non-existent back then, and the house was “for sale by owner.”) At the time, we had a three-year-old publication and a one-year-old daughter.  We figured that by the time she was eight (and it was 10) we’d be wildly successful publishing moguls, and would have added on to our little cottage under the oaks. Amelia’s now pushing 10 and Lowcountry Weekly’s almost 12, and – well, you've heard about the publishing biz, and biz in general – we haven’t been able to swing that addition. Space is a little tight, but fortunately, I love these people I share it with, and not a day goes by that I don’t say a prayer of thanks that we’re still here under this roof together… still here in this wonderful, winsome, weird little neighborhood.

But back to today… As I power-walked my way through Pigeon Point, I was marveling, once again, at the outrageous abundance of blooming foliage that springs up, seemingly overnight, this time of year. The camellias are just going crazy, along with those frothy pink trees that line the park. (What are those, anyway?) And that mysterious garden tucked away behind a crumbly brick wall at the end of my street – I secretly call it the Secret Garden – that was gray and forlorn just a week ago? Suddenly bursting with exuberant color! Seriously, the beauty of this place is staggering right now… and as Easter approaches, it’s only going to get better. As I walked, I could almost see the dogwoods blooming in slow motion, the azaleas birthing their bright blossoms into the world…

But then I turned onto Park Street, and I saw them. The trees. Like a nasty monster invading a sweet dream, the carnage shook me from my reverie. SCE&G has been “trimming” trees in our neighborhood – something they do every five years, to accommodate the power lines – and so far, Park Street’s gotten the worst of it. That’s because Park Street has some of the best trees – a long strand of gargantuan, wide-sprawling live oaks. These ancient, majestic beauties have been mangled but good – scooped out… gutted, really – and now appear to be doing upside-down splits, their remaining limbs awkwardly straddling the power lines. In a few fell swoops by men on machines in hardhats, these centuries-old oaks have gone from spectacular to spread-eagle (and semi-grotesque). I walk a lot, so I’ve seen this transformation several times since it happened… but it never ceases to shock me, casting a pall over my mood.

I’m not what you’d call a tree hugger – just somebody who likes trees, like everybody else – and I don’t plan on staging a sit-in. I know SCE&G has a job to do, and it’s an important one. But I can’t help wondering, every time I walk by, if those trees on Park Street really needed such extreme surgery? Was there not a better way? If so, why wasn’t it employed? Too expensive? Too difficult? At whom should we rail?

As I hoofed on down the road, pondering these weighty questions, I rounded a bend onto Darby Street… and stopped in my tracks. There before me, like a gang of chatty housewives off to market, was a gaggle of geese crossing the road. They turned to look at me – there must have been 8 or 10 of them – then immediately broke into a mad, squawking dash toward a thicket of bushes in the next yard.  Around here we have slews of birds and raccoons and squirrels. In summer, hardly a day goes by without my cat Arthur bringing a garden snake in through the cat flap. But this was the first gaggle of geese that ever crossed my path in Pigeon Point. Or anywhere, as far as I can remember. Suddenly, I felt like laughing. And in fact, I did. (Take that, SCE&G! Cut back our trees, if you must. We've still got geese!)

The live oaks on Park Street will re-grow their branches. That’s what live oaks do. And they’ll still be standing on Park Street – splendid, proud – when my family, my neighbors, and the guys on machines in hardhats are long gone. It's a funny thing, this dance we humans do with Nature. We need it more than it needs us – are at its mercy, not vice versa – and yet, we pretend otherwise. We convince ourselves we’re in control. We plant our gardens and build our walls, trim our trees and watch our weather reports. We make plans and expect them to unfold just so, despite inexplicably wintry winters and premature springs. We like believing we’re masters of the universe. But in reality, I think, we’re more like that gaggle of geese, just trying to make it across the road.

Oddly enough, I find that thought liberating.