Long Pause

With a sort of solemn fascination, I’ve observed a tree in a nearby park all summer. In mid-spring, after everything had recovered from the frozen hammer that hit us, this strong specimen of oak was healthy, vigorous, and well-placed for growth during the stressful drought of a St. Louis summer. At more than 50 years old, it had everything going for it. Right now, it is nearly dead. Two living branches remain sticking out from its scarred trunk; hopeful, etiolated but unpromising. Everything else in its 45-foot crown is withered. And its been a long, slow, instructive demise.

I first noticed it while bike riding. The bark had been blasted off the north side; a telltale sign of super-heated cambium. This was lightning death. As a spring cold front swept through, electrons in the field collected on the bark, turning the living tissues into a giant capacitor. When they became hyper-active and discharged to the sky, they turned the blood of the tree into steam, expanded, and took the living cells with it. BLAM! From a distance, we heard thunder. No one, probably, and certainly I hadn’t, heard the sigh of an insentient creature giving up its life-force in the struggle against futility.

The weird part about this, and what has captivated me, is that this wasn’t the tallest tree in the area. Within 20 feet on both sides, there are taller trees, more susceptible I would think, to being struck. They weren’t touched. And it makes me ask by what criteria this one was singled out.

It’s the not knowing, not seeing, that draws me and troubles me. Because this happens to people, too.

It was said of Jonathan Edwards that from the age of 17 on he contemplated is own death every day. This wasn’t morbid. If anything, it was intensely realistic. He did this to make certain that he would be able to say, each day, he lived as he thought he should have in the face of eternity. I’ve watched that tree with the same sort of temper.

My brandy is finished. Time for bed.

Today’s influences and soundtrack:
Michael Denton, Nature’s Destiny
Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings
Gabriel Faure, Requiem
Imogen Heap, Speak For Yourself
Jake Armerding, Caged Bird