Day after day, we continued, one tree at a time, until a flatbed was filled and hauled away and a new one took its place. The giant holes left behind in the orchard were like open wounds. I worried that the land felt the pain of extraction, a bloodless, quiet suffering of ripped soil and displaced rock and root, just as it would feel the final gasp for breath when the floodwaters rose. But if these mountains had taught me anything, it’s that the land endures, riding out human folly when it must, reclaiming itself when it is able, and moving on. Still, some evenings I sat in cool blue twilight
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