The Tale of the Doomed Tree
How could you be so unlucky? How could you let them take you? And what can you do, you helpless being? All you have is your branches, soon to be chopped off, your leaves, soon to be ground up, your seeds, soon to be scattered uselessly —
Seeds! Not useless! That’s what you must do! Scatter more seeds than you ever have. Wait for strong winds and let go of all your spores, your flying offspring, your future. Don’t reach out to the hill, the farms, the fields, you can drop them right here in the Glen. Do not be passive: act against your oppressors! Bring down a rain of seeds in a double wedding of spores and earth. Make the Glen dense with saplings. Let them make paper out of you, bind you in their books, set them aside unread. You will have a true legacy.
And let your offspring grow in the sun and rain, let them take over mill space, let them see the future you never will know, but can imagine. Let them see city dwellers invade the mill town, let them see boats take the city workers down the stream to work. No, boats will be too large for the waters; there will be ships of earth, of metals, with wheels like carts. Let your descendants see the metal carts transport the folk to and from the city every day, a new work force that will make mills puny and unprosperous, that will dismantle the mills. Let the trees see the town grow, break away from other towns, become its own force, make its own decisions. Let them see the young and strong town look at its namesake, its Glen, and choose to use it for sport and raucous activity, to almost ruin it, as they had with the mills, with one pleasure-seeking building after another: an amusement park, an amphitheater, a skate park. Finally, let the next generation of trees see the good people mend their ways, choose to leave the Glen for simple ambling and quietude, and trust that the trees will protect the land if the town protects the trees, if it keeps the Glen forever green.
You were once a seed, a twirling pod with a soul, looking for a home in the earth. You grew up in the Glen and now face the danger of the mill’s saws. But you will hurl your seed up the banks of the Glen to sprout on the ground overlooking the stream. And that tree will grow new branches, spread new seeds, and generate new trees. It is like the cycle of seasons that has passed through your branches over the years, the cycles of wet and dry spells that have challenged the running waters of the Glen, the cycles of people who come and go in the town, building up one facility and then tearing it down for a new one. It is even larger than the Glen, than the town, than the lands around, something familiar to you with your canopy up in the sky, facing the sun, something beyond the sun, beyond the stars: a cycle that builds up and then destroys the entire cosmos, and then starts all over again.
Forever. Forever anew. Forever green.
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