For a while we lived on some acreage, five rented acres, a small homestead in the middle of a venerable olive orchard, that itself lay in the middle of a venerable almond orchard, with virgin scrub--poison oak and manzanita--beyond, just where the valley climbs east toward the foothills of the northernmost Sierra Nevada. The owner had built the place to raise his family on, but once his sons were grown he and his wife moved back to town. Rumors circulated about developers buying up adjacent properties, but our landlord was adamant: he would never sell.
We liked it there. The area was a home too to magpies and rattlesnakes. Coyotes ate Pete the cat and several of our hens. The tallest, stoutest valley oak for miles around grew there. We dubbed it the Magic Oak and savored its protective silhouette against our sunsets, summer and winter.
The almond orchards beyond our boundary had been abandoned for many years. Star thistle grew thick between the trees, and where it gave way to oat grass the pheasants nested. We grew accustomed to their sudden barking in the midmorning silences, and again toward evening, and we enjoyed the racket the magpies made from their olive-tree nests. The foliage in the olive grove formed a low ceiling, and when the magpies left for the season there was a sweet hush between the twisted trunks, where tender grasses made a thin, cool carpet.
Finally, though, the chain saws came. Workers started in at 7 every morning, cutting swaths through the almond trees up toward us from the blacktop. Then came the heavy equipment--bulldozers, backhoes. The land around our five acres was flattened and streets were carved and pressed and paved. Pipe was laid, street lamps erected. They severed our phone line eight times.
When they reached the olive orchard they laid their chain saws down. The trees were just hitting their stride, really, old as they were, and were worth good money. Once a week a great machine came and scooped another dozen out of the ground, roots and all, and stacked them on flatbeds bound for a Palm Springs golf course.
We hung on tight as we could. But the landlord finally caved in to a developer from San Diego, and before long we were heaping our things into trailers and trucks and wending our way back to the city.
Trees get in the way of earthmovers, and every one of ours had been flagged for cutting. The first new residents of Creekside Estates, Phase I, were unloading their moving vans just as we left to make way for Phase III. There was no time for them to acquaint themselves with the Magic Oak, and I doubt they missed it when it was gone.
3:38:09 PM 
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