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The fall of a tree. Remember the tree I wrote about several entries back? The one that to me seemed to be the remnants of a worn, tattered mast. As I was walking home from work today, I saw it lying upon its side; its roots still clogged with the soil it had uprooted. The tree had fallen. Where a row of trees once divided a street, there was now one less. It must have fallen across the street away from where I stood. Another tree across the street looked ruffled; its branches on one side brutally torn away, revealing its white insides. Still, the great mast had fallen alone; there was no other casualty. Thus the old adage is again proven: while they stand united, they fall divided. Still, what had caused such a fall? Or was it inevitable; already destined to be? Something had been lost this day. Something had changed.

Would the tree have died anyway? It was, after all, already looking frail; its leaves had already been hanging on to its branches but just barely. I have seen potted plants dry up and shrivel, its stem becoming limp before it began to rot away. Was the tree to have died like this? Yet, it was hardly thinkable that a trunk so huge could shrivel; would it become like a rope and flop over? Not likely, for nature (and here I must proclaim my support for creationism and not Darwinism) is kind and would never allow such magnificient creatures to end in such shameful disgrace.

How then do trees die?

The lifespan of a tree is often so huge that they can outlive us many times over. Perhaps it is because of this that we rarely stop to ponder the fragility of the ecosystems; they never appear to ever die. Forests often look the same: same pillars of red reaching up into a vast expanse of green, same litter of brown across the forest floor. And so, excepting vast deforestation, we tend to take it for granted.

Yet, look around at the wooden furniture that we have. Cut off from the soil, it still is: it neither grows nor wither. So what then is the conclusion of the matter? I propose that trees then never really die. Excepting physical force, chemical weathering or biological decomposition, trees endure; even if their life processes ground to a halt.

Now, that is something truly thought-provoking, is it not?