In writing class today we had to write a short piece about a chunk of wood our teacher brought in. While that sounds rather bland, it's actually an interesting exercise. The piece of wood is from BC, near Shuswap Lake where my teacher lived for a short while. Not unlike a still life piece in art where you are asked to draw a banana in whatever way you see fit, the exercise is about looking through and beyond the subject.
Here's a sneak peek at what I wrote, and will be submitting next class.
I am small, the prospect of something greater than the “me” of now. Time is not as fleeting as you may think, and I cherish each second as I fall from my home to soil below. As I fall into the loam below I lay in awe of the great distance I have already travelled. When the first rain yields the earth beneath me, I settle in and rest for the journey I must make upward once again.
My thirst is quenched by Margaret and my hunger satiated by soil of Shuswap. The sun squeezes through the limbs of my forefathers and races to warm the land below. Slowly, so slowly I split the confines of my earthen blanket and am greeted by the stunning silence of a land unhindered by industry. The wind tugs at me, threatening to tear me from the ground and toss me into the lake. With filamentous roots I hold on for dear life, life which is as important to me as it is to the birds that cry overhead.
The air is cool, sharp and it stings my soft green sides. I know – yet how I know, I know not – that winter is soon and I will hibernate in the sparse snow that gathers around my family’s feet. As I shut my eyes and conserve my resources I wilt in the face of briefest winter. Long do I sleep, dreaming of times where I will soar with those same crying birds, standing taller and mightier than any before me. As my dream comes to an end I feel the caress of rain against my skin. Waking to the first rain of the season I cannot help but feel energized exhilarated to continue my quest. Spring is long, and harmonious. My family opens their home to the nesting sparrow, and cruel osprey. One day I too will be host to a kingdom of my own fauna.
The dry summer bakes my skin, hardens me, and tempers my body from sapling to tree. In a pubescence that will last for centuries I grow. The loss of my first leaves to the coming fall shames me. I am naked, small, and insignificant. I am heartened though as the once sharp wind falls dull against my firm exterior. I stand in defiance of the winter that looms in the coming months. I do not sleep, instead I press onward, upward. It is this cycle I follow for year after year.
I am godfather to countless squirrels, robins, mice and insects. My first tenant is a tiny chipmunk who has taken refuge in my minimal foliage. Chased up my side by a hungry coyote, he tickles me with his sharp claws. If I had a mouth I would have let out a laugh that would have relieved the woods of the quietude it lingers in so often. Too quickly does the chipmunk move on and for several more months do I remain alone, stoic and steadfast. The first time I feel true sunlight on my fingertips I feel excitement. Standing but a branch shorter than my father I can lookout upon the world. For the briefest of moments I feel immense. My size dwarfs the shrubs and ferns at my feet and not even the trees around me match my goliath quality. It is then I see the lake, the horizon, the clouds, the mountains and suddenly I am small again.
Resigned to my fate I grow outward. Eager to support my height with thicker limbs, stronger roots I build upon myself. Two hundred years. Three hundred years. Six hundred years.
The seasons race by, and as I am greeting the children of birds in my care I am already bidding them farewell. The greying tops of the mountains extend and recede each year. They are ancient friends sharing laughs of millennium past. They too grow, much slower than I. Perhaps one day I will be larger, mightier than they. I have now fathered my own children in the space where my forefathers lived. Their deaths feed my seeds, and for giants that seemed immortal their passing reminds me of my own mortality. I can feel my knees ache and moan.
I do not know how many more seasons I can weather.
As I enter the summer of my 800th season, a fierce wind – that same fierce wind that once threatened to rip me from the ground – now threatens to send me crashing towards it. I am old, ancient, a Methuselean aspect. With a crack of thunderous quality I buckle at the knees. For the briefest of moments as I hurtle towards the earth – that same earth that once cushioned my formative fall – I am caught in the nostalgia of it all.
We fall, we grow, we fall again.
As I lay on my side, wheezing out the last of my breaths I feel myself fragmented into hundreds of shards. For all my might, and all my grandeur I am as fragile as glass.
Perhaps one day I will be welcomed into the home of another, as I was home to life and death of countless others.
One day.
A pleasure. A+
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