denuded

The foreground is a scar of denuded earth, storage tanks and bobbing pumpjacks — the legacy of oil discovered a century ago when only farmhouses were scattered over the surrounding flatlands.

The Victorians worried about a “world denuded of larger significance,” but we suffer from both material surfeit and spiritual abundance, and are captive to a surplus of competing and increasingly angry gods.

Surrounding hillsides, significantly denuded of plant life, are dotted with scores of freshly cut stumps.

Moments later, it emerged as a landscape denuded of all color save brown and gray and the occasional red-rimmed maw of a destroyed brick rooftop.

The stream banks were denuded of vegetation and the riffle crests obliterated as the choked stream tried to reach the sea.