Golden Grove

This forest no longer exists. It was a working tree farm in Oregon, tens of thousands of poplars planted by hand in rows so straight they played tricks on your eyes, and every fall the whole thing turned gold at once. Then the land changed hands and the trees came down.
I remember the sound most. Millions of dry leaves moving at the same time, like quiet applause. The ground was ankle deep in gold, and the rows lined up no matter which way I turned, corridor after corridor of slender silver trunks with a seam of blue sky running down the center of each one.
I made the frame low and wide so the trees tower the way they did when I stood under them, and the corridor pulls your eye all the way to its vanishing point. Symmetry this perfect does not happen in nature. Someone planted it one sapling at a time and never knew they were building a cathedral.
For anyone who collects places that cannot be visited twice. Printed and finished to gallery standard, made to pull a room in and warm it. A piece of a forest that is gone, still standing on your wall.