One Beautiful Summer Day

Time has moved quickly on, and soon I will once again have added another year to my age. My thoughts still travel back to former times. One especially beautiful summer day comes to mind.

A young woman from the neighbouring household wanted to go somewhere to gather medicinal plants and thought I could come with her, because I knew more or less where they could be found. By car it took nearly half an hour to reach the place.

Before us opened a view of a true field of flowers. It was unused land, a fallow field filled with wildflowers of every colour. Clover bloomed in several shades and bees hummed among its flower heads. Pink fireweed and violet plants caught the eye. Everywhere there were blue and yellow vetches, and in addition white and yellow daisies stretched before us almost like a sea. We could only marvel and gasp at how beautiful nature can be in its own natural form.

We asked each other: dear friend, who planted all of this here, who tended it so that such a beautiful sight could be offered to a person who loves nature?

Among the flowers we found the medicinal plants we needed, but the greatest dose we received that day was for the soul and the heart, simply by enjoying nature.

All memories fade as time passes, and surely we will never see such beauty there again. That flower meadow later began to be used as a storage area for timber being hauled from the forest. Different winds blow there now, everything feels sad and smells different — of stacks of resin-scented pine logs. Only one question remains: where did all those flowers go?

Oh, my beautiful mushroom forest, what has happened to you? Where are the tall pine trees and the mossy, red lingonberry tussocks beneath them?

Where is the dew-covered path that wound between the pines and, after rain during the day, lay under a white veil of mist by evening? Those dear giant trees are gone, and so is the little path. Great forestry machines have trampled it into potholes and mud. Everywhere lie the remains of conifers, no longer useful to anyone after the valuable parts have been taken away. Was this done by a storm that shows no mercy in its path?

No, this is not the work of a storm. It is the work of human hands. Money, and once again money, drives this work. In place of forest come great clear-cut fields where reeds, cow parsley and meadowsweet take over. How can a frail young spruce or pine planted to renew the forest grow among such tall plants?

Will trees as mighty as those raised by our forefathers ever have time to grow again in Estonia in place of the forests that are now cut down without mercy and sent abroad?

Will future generations still hear the tapping of a woodpecker and the twitter of birds? Will a roe-deer mother find shelter for her little fawn? Will the cuckoo disappear from our forests so completely that a spring passes almost without hearing it?

I write these lines with worry in my heart, because I do not want everything to be devastated and broken. I love nature and I know that destroying things is easy. Let us protect the little homeland we have and restrain those whose greed for money knows no bounds.