My homage to the trees!

I remember how far back in my teenage years I lamented for those big old silver birch trees along the bank of  a small river right behind my childhood house in the far remote Altay Mountains of the far Northwestern China.  One day all of a sudden in the 70s for some unknown reason  a few guy showed up on the river and started to  cut down those beautiful birches one by one. I remember I felt so sad for after all those big birches were so much part of my life: I had spend numerous hours watching birds nestled in their foliage and small trouts coming to rest in their cool shadows from their big limbs bending over the water of the river in the hot summer,  and later in my early teens I spent hours upon hours sketching in watercolor their beautiful silhouettes along the river.   Three decades later after I finally went back  from Canada to revisit my birth place I found myself standing on an ugly cemented road with potholes where the river used to flow and the birch used to stand lamenting again for those beautiful trees. I remember clearly it was right on the bank of the river across from the groves of birch one day when I was about 6 years old I sported a lone oil painter sitting there with a pochade box on his lap painting away to his heart content totally oblivion to the political storm that was about to engulf every part of China, the Cultural revolution! The images of that lone painter painting away on a quiet river was so cemented into my memory that  even today I still feel myself under its spell !