Sometimes I think about what my legacy will be. We work on so many trees, so many different types of situations and species, so many different types of homeowners and tree owners. Thousands and thousands and thousands of collar cuts. It would be easy to get complacent, to absent mindedly make a poor cut, a small tear past the collar, forget a stub in a remote area of the crown.
But that's just it. Once everything is said and done, all of those cuts will be hidden, compartmentalized forever in the biology of the tree. I think of the Tibetan monks and their practice of mendala, beautifully and painstakingly crafted sand art, and just as it's finished it's quickly wiped away in a metaphor of the how impermanent this life may be.
But there is a lasting quality in craft, especially craft practiced with conviction. That's where I find meaning in arboriculture, in the fact that every cut, for me, is a work of art, even if it is impermanent. Every cut matters.
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