Life is a funny thing, and it can happen in funny places. The inside of dark, quiet caves hundreds of metres under the ground, giant planktonic masses off the coast of Antarctica, sterilized clinics, and sewer systems are all places where life frequently, constantly, doggedly makes itself known. In this particular case, the seed of it began about seventy feet off the ground, alongside some six hundred thousand of its siblings. As with most living things it was jaded enough by birth to accept this as normal, although it was aided by not having a brain or any central nervous system whatsoever available to express disbelief.
The list of things that it knew was very short: it was dangling from something, there was something else (let’s call it a wind) that was very big and all-encompassing causing it to bounce wildly and shudder – more so today than any other it could remember – and… whoops, now it wasn’t dangling from anything at all and was free-falling through it, bouncing against something quite a lot like itself, and another, then another, and soon it had ricocheted off its siblings times innumerable as it spun like a top, little wings on either side of the package that was itself whirling. So it went, typical enough for a maple seed, only really becoming aware of its family just too late to say goodbye to them.
What was atypical was the distance traveled. The windstorm, the storm of the century the seed rode upon, was exactly strong enough to knock down full-grown trees, up to and including its parent, which it had departed less than ten minutes before it finally started to sway its way down past the point of no return. Not a long time, for a tree, and its final relatively-brief moments were spent wishing a vague sort of goodwill to its descendants and relations, marred only by a very, very brief bit of worriment concerning beetles. Sap isn’t the best conductor of thought, but roots reach surprisingly deep.
Just not deep enough this time.
Crash.
The same wind that orphaned the seed and six hundred thousand of its siblings was gentle with it, relatively speaking. Pieces of its wings went spinning away as it hurtled through the night, but the seed itself stayed snug, if damp, as the leaves down below it whistled and rumbled through the night, broken occasionally by the scream-and-thud of a creaky old trunk giving up the ghost. A very puzzling experience for the seed to be sure, one that ended as the gale turned to a wind to a breeze, riding its way down from the dizzying heights as the sun started to plod its way upwards.
Down it came, graceful as a one-winged eagle. The seed touched down in a fine layer of leaf litter and checked its deepest plant instincts. This took about a week. After that, a single, hesitant, somewhat nervous and embarrassed tendril poked its way into the outside world, touched dirt, and liked what it found.
It wanted more. It got it, but cautiously, and therefore slowly. And slow for a tree is slow. That first quiet, secretive root sprouted and crept. A crude semblance of a stem was erected and hastily be-leaved – and just before the last drops of energy and nutrition were milked out of the seedling’s original home. No sooner was it out than something small, long, and tubular with far too many legs (by the seedling’s standards, any legs at all) tried to munch on it. And no sooner had it taken four mouthfuls than something else with far fewer legs (but still too many) fell down out of the sky, plucked it up in a sharp, horny thing sticking out of its face, ate it, and flew away.
The seedling wasn’t quite sure if it wanted to sprout anymore after that, but realized it would make no difference. Stoicism is considered a strong point among trees, but fatalism is an acceptable second-best.
Time passed at the usual rate, but as is also usual, perceptions argued differently. Summer sauntered by at an easy pace for the deer, crept forwards for approximately one-sixth of the entirety of the shrews’ lifespans, and was here-and-there by the time the seedling was just getting the hang of this leaf thing. Before it knew what was going on, half the chlorophyll had been blocked out of its hard-grown leaves and they’d turned into morbid reddish things that fell off and withered up right in front of it. It was so horrified that it barely noticed the dropping temperature until it was buried under two and a half feet of snow. The less said about that the better. Something small and furry rushed past it at blurring speed, tunnelling a hole to the surface that iced over, thawed, and caved in as the snow was reduced to puddles where the sapling half-drowned even as new leaves sprang up.
That was definitely the worst year, the first one, when every single surprise was a nasty one that would lay low dozens of the seedling’s peers all around it as pointed examples. And the second wasn’t much better, especially when a passing deer casually nibbled away half of it before strolling off to clear-cut its neighbour, munching to herself. Or when the seedling played host to three caterpillars at one time, and came out of it with maybe three leaves left. Or the unusually sharp and cold autumn that turned into a prolonged winter.
So, maybe the second year was actually the worst one and the first was just the most shocking. But in any case, it was a grimly determined little seedling that shook off the meltwater and dug its roots in deeper come springtime.
At least there was plenty of room for the seedling; even as its roots spread and its height grew, its space grew no more cramped. A creaky old ash tree had succumbed to the storm that brought it here, and it had left a nice clear space in the canopy that the seedling and something like ten compatriots of similar size inhabited. As of yet, none of them had come close enough to do anything more than eye each other distrustfully and boldly rustle their leaves. It was a silent time, even for vegetation, and the seedling resigned itself to another competitive spring as it revved up its chlorophyll again.
Excuse me, said a very small and excessively polite voice, but I don’t believe you’re using this particular patch of topsoil at the moment, are you?
The seedling nearly shed its freshly-budding leaves in surprise. A very small and very colourful little plant was unfolding itself at its base.
No, not at all, it replied, after quickly checking its roots, which the stranger didn’t appear to be intruding on. What are you? How did you get there? What are you doing?
I think, said the very small plant, as it sprouted a little higher and brightened its little white decorations, that I am a daisy. I believe a seed was dropped here somehow and I sprouted, much like you. And I’m trying to grow just a bit higher so I can duck out of your shadow here and get a little more sunlight. You’re awfully shady.
How are you doing that? Asked the seedling.
Doing what? Replied the daisy, sprouting further and further.
Growing so fast. You’re already almost as tall as I am. The seedling was very poor at hiding its annoyance, it had been quite proud that it’d managed to grow at all last year, and now some uppity little white-and-yellow thing had popped up and done two year’s work in the span of a single springtime.
I’m not sure. Maybe my sibling knows.
The tree politely tried to figure out which of the several hundred nearby daisies it had only just realized were surrounding it had been indicated, which took just long enough to be uncomfortable. Then become more uncomfortable as the numbers sank in.
So, how are you growing so fast? The seedling inquired of what it hoped was the correct daisy, as the first heat wave of the fresh summer came along.
About done, really, it said, petals drooping in the warmth. Spring’s the big season for that. Now we just relax.
A dreary, miserably damp weekend passed overhead, leaving the seedling gleaming with delicious moisture. Why stop? It asked.
No real point. If it were a bit warmer around here maybe, but as it is, we’re just about finished.
There was a pause in the conversation as the seedling watched four deer meander through the grove, clear-cutting two of its rivals on the clearing’s opposite side down to nothing in a single terrifyingly grisly afternoon.
With what? It asked, trying to take its mind off what it’d just seen.
Eh?
Finished with what?
Life. Sprouted, bloomed, blossomed, pollinated, seeded. What else is there to do?
Grow, said the seedling.
For you, maybe, said the daisy’s sibling. We don’t work that way. At least, not around here. It fell into drowsy silence then, and the seedling was left in confusion and embarrassment for the rest of July and all of August. Then came September and the first real overnight frost with it. No sooner had it melted off with the morning sun than the seedling saw the daisy, the daisy’s sibling, and all the others drooping mournfully.
What is it? The seedling asked.
Oh, just about that time, said the daisy, sleepiness clogging its voice. Thank goodness. Staying upright was getting to be quite the chore.
Time for what?
The daisy looked like it was about to say something, but then the second, much sharper frost hit. And when the sun rose after that, none of the daisies looked like they were going to say anything.
When spring came again, so did the daisies, and their polite voices. But none of them were the same, and after a few halting attempts at conversation, the seedling gave up and consigned them to their own conversations and itself to trying to keep up with that one other maple across the clearing, which had already managed to overshade its smaller neighbour and was currently in the lead. So the seedling brushed away thoughts of daisies, though it made the innermost layers of its phloem twitch, and tried to focus on the things that would still be around next year. Thankfully, there were plenty of them.
The hole that led to the precious, light-giving sky above began to shrink as the trees surrounding the clearing slowly caught on. The seedling became a sapling, as did its competitors, who were now beginning to blot one another out in earnest. It was lucky, and still had no immediate neighbours, no one to taunt or debate or trade or semi-amicably exchange threatening banter with. Except for the daisies, which seemed to trouble it now and then.
This did not go unnoticed by the middle-aged ash nearby, child of the ancient tree that had graciously collapsed to give birth to the sapling’s clearing.
What’s wrong? it inquired one day.
Why do we grow? asked the sapling.
If you don’t, you’ll drown in shade beneath your neighbours, said the ash.
No, I mean, why do we grow and other things don’t?
The ash considered this. Like what?
Daisies. Deer. Caterpillars. They all grow up and stop, and then they die. We just grow. Why do they stop and die and we don’t?
They just don’t, said the ash. You can’t fix it, you can’t help it. Grow and be happy you don’t have to do it, and they’ll do the same.
The sapling grew, made a game effort at being happy, and kept thinking about it. Some of its thoughts centered on the other maple, which had eclipsed its closest three neighbours and was approximately the sapling’s own height despite having had to fight for its light. They never spoke, but they watched each other constantly, two very large bears browsing opposite ends of the same berry patch.
What it finally took for them to make contact was the summer, the hottest one yet in the sapling’s two decades or so of life. The heat waves rolled over and on top of one another, building themselves into a blistering beachhead of oven-baked air and scorching surfaces. Small things expired in open ground, bodies steaming as the water baked out of them. The entire forest was parched and bleached, and the sapling (barely even still a sapling) had to delve deep and long for moisture, roots questing fervently. Maybe it would have to stop growing, it thought, and lurking behind that were other, more unpleasant ideas connected with small polite colourful things and its own mortality. Luckily enough it was just as those images were becoming uncomfortably clearer that its questing tendril dug into damp soil. Unluckily enough, it also almost dug into the other maple’s taproot.
Pardon me, it said, but I believe that I was here first.
The not-quite-a-sapling thought about the daisies.
Just for the drought, it said. Just for the drought. I’ll withdraw after that. As it spoke, it wormed the root in deeper, surreptitiously securing anchorage.
Before it could so much as realize what was happening, its root was in an iron vice, sap slowly oozing out as it was cut off by pressure.
I don’t think you will, said the other maple.
What followed was very slow, quite awkward, and fuelled by the sort of slow-boiling inexplicable angry, paranoid fear that can’t be found in anything that doesn’t live for over a century. At first the sapling liked to think it sought only defence, but as it sank more and more tendrils into the seething, wrestling mass that both their root systems were rapidly being diverted into, it admitted it was pushing the definition. Nearly all of the precious water they found was put straight to work in their roots, surging forth new laterals, deepening their taproots, hunting and battling downward farther still. The drought ended, but their feud did not, not during the discarding of their leaves, not during the first sharp frosts, not until the full strength of winter brought a forced cease-fire through cold so fierce that the sap froze in their minds and ice coated them like a caterpillar infestation.
As the thaws came in that spring, the two involuntarily relaxed, roots feeling new life begin to flow again, leaves budding gingerly into the cool reception of the sun.
Perhaps, said the sapling, it has been long enough.
The other maple considered its competitors, who had quietly taken advantage of its distraction to gain some precious, desperately-needed height in late summer and early autumn.
Agreed, it said.
It was around then when they discovered that neither of them could extract their roots from the tangled ball they’d become, or even recall how in earth they’d even managed to do it in the first place. That was an unpleasant spring, although it did introduce the sapling to the novel problem of having too much to talk about. The other maple had an expansive vocabulary, and employed enough of it that the sapling almost wished it could go back to the less painful battle of wrestling for the groundwater.
More and more generations of the daisies sprung up around the sapling – the tree’s – roots, but they grew fewer and sparser each spring, shrinking as the maple tree and its compatriots ate up the hole to the sky, branches poking up into the wide world of the canopy, where echoes of conversations held miles away were many and the mood was more amiable, the competition less ferocious.
The canopy wasn’t the only place to speak. The ash, withdrawn though it was, often had an amiable word, and the other maple spoke often now, even if much of it was pointed requests to relocate a root that was delving somewhere personal.
The tree distracted itself in routine, and was surprised at how easily it was drawn in now that it had sufficient size to render most deer and insect predations moot. Spring comes, bud leaves, grow roots, dig deep, breathe hard, fill all gaps with somnolent conversation over the canopy’s leaves, decay, sleep, repeat. Beyond storms and several prolonged scratching session by an idle grizzly the routine was ironclad and immutable. This was interrupted by the sudden arrival of small, colourful blossoms along its branches late one spring. They reminded it of the daisies, except brighter. Similar blooms sprouted along the branches of the other maple and its shrunken vassals, peeking out between the leaves.
Wonderful, the other maple remarked. A chance to do something other than sprout; and the tree had to agree with it. By spring’s end the entire forest was a haze of pollination, and somewhere in the midst of summer the flowers dropped and hundreds of thousands of slender, winged seeds dangled from the grove’s inhabitants. It was a disconcerting sensation, particularly whenever they started dreaming particularly loud and the sound made the tree’s xylem rattle. Still, if it was uncomfortable, it was the kind of discomfort the tree welcomed.
When they began to blow away in clumps during a mild midday breeze, the tree found itself uncomfortably barren of things to tell them, wherever they might land and start their struggle.
Goodbye, it said. It searched for more. Don’t get in trouble. I hope you’re lucky.
The other maple chuckled. The tree devoted a few days to growing an extra tendril and poked it in the taproot.
Years were kinder at maturity, thought the tree. The leaves came easier, and came down easier. The pollen and seeding woke you up very nicely for a few months (it still couldn’t think of anything more profound to tell its seeds), and the hum and bustle of the canopy lulled it peacefully as it swayed its way through breeze and storm. Nothing tried to eat it that it couldn’t ignore and outlive. Even the other maple was friendlier, seeing as they were probably exchanging half the pollen each of them received each spring. Altogether, things were quite ideal.
The ash died one quiet autumn, to a bolt of lightning from a just-clearing sky after a mild storm. Half of it was seared away instantly and it crumpled to the forest floor without fuss, dignity, or regrets. The tree didn’t quite know what to make of that – and especially not of the daisies that it barely-saw sprouting from around the topped trunk – but it heard sorrowful whisperings across the canopy for months afterwards. Bad luck, they said.
Didn’t have long to go as it was, said the other maple. It was starting to creak loud enough in those high winds to deafen an oak.
That was just its way, said the tree. It could’ve stood strong for another six decades.
The other maple laughed again, the force of it sending the pair of withered little near-saplings that were its vassals shuddering, seeming to be supported as much by the thickets of brush that had sprung up around them as holding on their own. Maybe you, definitely me, but that old thing? It said. You are too much of an optimist. Perhaps if you’d ended up on this side of the glade, you’d be more realistic.
If I’d ended up on that side of the glade, said the tree, I’d be hiding underneath you desperate for sunlight and you’d have half your root system tangled up in my leftovers.
This time, the near-saplings were almost toppled.
Other trees fell, of course, though none as much in close proximity as the ash. Over the seasons and the grand circles of the decades, they tipped over near and far, and though it seemed more the latter than the former, it was an odd thing when one day the tree noticed that it was the tallest of its kind for as far as its canopy could touch. Except for the other maple.
I am taller by a foot, it stated, smugness pervading the air about it nearly as headily as its pollen. In the midst of its canopy, a family of squirrels bickered noisily and scattered to the four corners of the woods.
Nonsense, said the tree. It’s nothing but the angle of your leaf-growth. Once autumn comes you’ll be the same as I, or even shorter.
The other maple rustled indignantly. The same? Unlikely. Shorter? Impossible. I may have had to fight for what is mine, but it was worth it. What has held you back over there? Sloth!
The tree rumbled a day-long laugh at that. Silly things. I can’t believe that this is what the ones around us did while we worked our way up to the canopy. Speaking of silly things all day long, comparing branch length, life colour. Isn’t having a place in the sunlight enough?
It’s never enough, the other maple stated.
The youngest squirrel returned and built a nest in the other maple’s crown next spring, snapping off enough branches to bring their height neck and neck. There was much arguing over whether or not this was considered fair.
It was some time before the first and last blow was struck, but when it came, it was as quick as it was quiet. The spring surge had only just begun to ripen when the tree saw the lithe little ropes wrapped tight around the other maple’s trunk and branches, weaving through the treetops with lazy, effortless speed.
Hello? It inquired. The other maple trembled, but made no response. Its roots squirmed, wandering wildly from their usual placement.
A very small sound on the edge of the tree’s hearing drew its attention: the laughter of the vassals down below. For the first time in years it looked on them, and it could barely see them through the tangle of vines and creepers that ensnared them. One was already rotting upright, the other half-sagging into the embrace of its woody cocoon.
It was worth it, it cackled, in such a tiny voice that the tree was barely sure it was there. Every moment of it. It still is. Had to talk to them for days to persuade them, had to promise them we’d let them use us, but now they’re there. It’s all over. For all three of us.
By the time the tree managed to unstick the words from its mind, it was too late to ask any more.
That summer was the longest one the tree had ever lived through. The vines slipped through the other maple’s canopy like snakes into mouse burrows, delicately but firmly throttling it alive from the treetops down. The most the tree could do for it was adjust the other maple’s roots as they struggled, guiding them to its own deposits of nutrients and down to groundwater. Its own growth suffered, but it seemed to calm the other maple, though it still struggled, shaking its root network free of many of the ancient knots they’d tied themselves together with, blind fumbling doing what deliberate movement hadn’t so many years ago. .
As fall passed on and their leaves changed – not that the other maple had many left to change – the vines dried and shed their own, drawing themselves into dormancy, toughening but slumbering.
The other maple had a little time to speak and act before the winter sleep came, and did so on a perfectly windless day.
A pity, it said. No anger, just irritation. But that was near enough to six decades. I suppose most don’t get as far.
It will be allright, said the tree.
I should very well expect so, said the other maple. This would be easier if you hadn’t tried to stop me from pulling loose, you know, but I expect I can still aim properly. Still, if you fall over too, it’s your own silly fault.
Pardon? said the tree. The other maple was tipping back and forth, swaying of its own accord, aiming, judging distances.
Goodbye, it said. Don’t get in trouble. I hope you’re lucky.
By spring, all four of them were a formless mass. The vines and the vassal near-saplings were half-rotted underneath the other maple’s trunk, but the other maple itself was largely pristine in the warming sun.
The maple decided that it would’ve liked that.
The summer of the vines had been long and painful, but the years after it seemed to vanish as quickly as the maple could comprehend them, as if in a hurry to distance it.
The maple was alone, and stranger yet, alone in a crowd of trees that were suddenly and strangely younger and smaller than it. Where had all the old growth gone, the towering green spires that rose alongside it?
Where are you? it asked the canopy. Which, it was alarmed to notice, lay beneath its crown. Puzzled, polite rustlings were its only reply.
Exactly one decade from the summer of the vines, the maple’s seeds were near-ripe. It hadn’t felt right releasing them since the other maple fell; there was no one to laugh at it.
The maple looked out over the forest, at all that life-given shadow, and it felt the slight breeze brush against its creaking trunk.
No, not yet, it said. And so it wasn’t.
Holding in seeds that were demanding to be released was difficult, but the maple was determined, firm in that it was not yet, and such an attitude often trumps reasonableness. Three months wandered by, three aching, swollen months as ironwood-strength stubbornness crept through its sap and performed heroic tasks in its phloem, all based on guesses and stubbornness to shut in its seeds and stall their launching. Not yet.
It was September when the wind changed, when the storm came roiling down from the north, a blustering, howling gale that came roaring in through the forest, scattering deer and making wolves howl.
The storm of the century was very nearly late, but it was still on the cusp of punctuality as it came back to greet the maple for the second time, on behalf of its illustrious predecessor.
The maple had run out of thoughts and words both, it decided as the seeds spilled out eagerly, overdue, cramped, and impatient, vanishing into the teeth of the wind to sprout and grow. But then again, it still had the core of hope that had hidden at the bottom of its message all those years.
Find somewhere not like this, and keep it like that. Don’t steal the sun. Please be kind to each other. Two hundred years isn’t long enough to justify cruelty.
And don’t be afraid to argue over silly things.
The thought struck it on the way down, inexplicably, was that it had never had trouble with beetles. That was good, for some reason. Maybe it all hadn’t been so bad.
“A New Leaf and Old Growth,” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.