Greenwood Tarot - Seven of Wands Clearance

Chesca Potter writes:
The Sevens Major arcana: Death/ Guardian Position on wheel: Samhain. Chakra: base
Seven of Wands: Clearance This is the time of year for cutting down dead wood, and pruning to enable better future growth. An axe rests beside some cut silver birch, whilst the dead wood is burnt in a November bonfire. It is time to take action in order to clear outworn modes of behaviour from areas of your life. A clarification, a paring down of intention. The fire purifies negativity, transforming the energy.

7 0f Wands: Clearance:
the rather sparse scene shows us the lower Tree trunks of 3 Birch Trees. , one stump of a felled Tree and its trunk cut to equally long sections, piled in the middle of the card, a neolithic wood ax propped up among the stems.
There is, in the background, the intention of the activity: Fire -warmth, security, food, also maybe shelter. To get these things, the Tree had to die.

I “get” this image.
We also chop our own wood, for winter warmth and at times for construction purposes.
The silent cry of a dying Tree.
One minute a living individual within a functioning community, the next reduced to a piece of wood.
To me a Tree - a Dandelion - is just as alive as a Marten an Ant, a human being. All have distinct personalities - and a Spirit. When we fell someone, I feel sad and horrrrrible and mourn the life....

Then there are the incidences, like last year in winter, when we had a lot of freezing rain and then wet snow on top of that and we lost hundreds of Trees on our land. And again - the 1 meter snow within 2 days in December 09 did similar devastation and hundreds more broke of, in about chest height, leaving a sad tangle of DEATH.
Then we go out, not with a neolithic wood ax, but with a loud and smelly chainsaw and cut.
Cut down what can not be saved, make neat piles of logs that can be pulled out of the bush with tobagos - by hand and muscle by us.....
Then we also try to save, what somehow is beneath the carnage: Young Trees, bent and weight down by the bodies of their fallen family members.
We work until our backs creak and hurt and our muscles ache. But we also have a very satisfied grin on our tiered and pitch-covered faces. Hard labour “clearing” leaves us with a feeling of contentment and achievement.
“Clearing” anything always does that!

The logs that are cut here make me think of the small trees on the side of a river or stream where a beaver has been busy. With an axe, the cuts are angular from a single plane. These look gnawed from all sides the way a beaver clears the brush to make his dam.

The fire started me to thinking about how similar the trees look in this card to that of a forest after a fire, charred and grey. The massive destruction of fire clears the way for new growth. Certain species of trees can only reproduce if a fire destroys the parent. The seeds will lie dormant until fire releases them.