Wendy Dinwiddie /
March 15, 2022
The First Time that the Trees Began to Walk | Wendy Dinwiddie

About The Author

Wendy Dinwiddie

Wendy Dinwiddie lives in Tuscaloosa with an American elm and a dog named Birdie. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama. Her work appears in Ploughshares, Bat City Review and elsewhere. Find out more at wendydinwiddie.com or on Twitter @wendy_dinwiddie.

Last April, the woman who raised me died. It was hard, the grieving long. In the process of readying her estate for sale, the trees of my childhood were cleared away. The land exposed. Long Branch and Old Mother carted off. I’d written this story years before this happened. I’d like to pretend it was prophetic, but the cycle of deforestation and loss is unending in Appalachia. This is what fairy tales are to me, a way of telling the story of grief and wonder and loss that came before us, continues through us, will be here when we’re gone.