DIARY OF A TREE DYING

Sunday: I awake to an overcast sky and look forward to some rain that the clouds promise. Most of the day is dull and uneventful and I start to wonder if I will receive the promised drink. As evening approaches, rain starts to drizzle gently on my leaves and I rejoice in the touch and sound of the rain. My leaves and branches reach upward, seeking the moist sky while my thirsty roots delve deeper into the soil to celebrate the life giving force of rain.

Monday: Arriving in a teasing flurry of wind and rain, the day appears to be full of fun. The rain and wind pounce, twist and turn in a playful game of hide and seek. However, after a few hours, I feel electrically charged particles tingle every cell in my body as the sky begins to darken and the wind increases in strength. I am old and know that a storm brewing. Low sulky grey clouds look ominously around as they stab me with heavy pellets of rain. With a vicious howl, the wind rushes erratically around my trunk and through my branches. I am now somewhat disturbed and try to prepare myself for what might become a furious battle between this angry storm and myself.

Trapped and frightened against such an enemy, I brace myself by clinging tightly to the soil. Rain hurtles down so fast that my leaves can barely breathe. It plunges, knife like, into every crevice of my bark, darkening my thoughts and threatening my sanity. I am losing my sense of time as the steely, dense clouds blanket over me. The ceaseless rain is smothering me and I feel the soil becoming waterlogged. I feel my roots move slightly as each gust of wind batters me from side to side like a threshing machine. No-one hears my groaning and crying. My friends are barely visible and I know that they are suffering too.

Like a madman, the mercurial wind tosses me around. I try to stand proudly but the screaming wind shows me no mercy as it heaves my branches horizontally. Like a flying mass of insects, my leaves are being torn cruelly into tiny pieces and thrown in all directions. Small branches are being wrenched, recklessly, away from my limbs to blast and injure my friends. I, too, share their agony and torture and I have become extremely frightened. How long, I wonder, can I withstand this onslaught?

As the day progresses to darkness, I become worried and depressed. My thoughts are very dark. It is the feeling of the unknown, of being isolated, and of being engulfed in this void of darkness. The night is truly a living nightmare. In the pitch blackness, the wind and rain maintain their ceaseless onslaught, never allowing a break from attack. The night is lasting forever and there is nothing I can do to relieve my agony. I pray to mother earth for some respite and to show a little mercy but she cannot or won’t hear me.

The wild wind screams loudly with a victorious howl as it smashes trees to the ground. I feel their vibrations as they crash heavily. I hear their sobs and cries as they bounce on the mushy earth. The wind, with an evil laugh, continues its terrorising attack leaving me no time to grieve for my friends. I feel a wrenching pain as one of my main branches is grasped by the wind and thrown forcibly to the ground to be battered further by the rain. I fear that I may not survive the night.

Tuesday: The chaos of the night ushers in a murky dawn. I quickly survey my friends and feel distressed by the havoc bestowed on them in last night’s carnage. Many of my magnificent tall friends are lying and dying on the cold, soggy ground. Horrified by the destruction around me, the feeling of hopelessness will not go away.

The wind and rain whirls and pulls me around in all directions. In one convulsive blast, the wind propels me forward. I shudder and shriek. Dizzily, time becomes suspended in space. Reality only exists when I slam against the wet brick wall of a nearby house and my branches and leaves cling to the roof tiles.

In celebration, the rain dances madly down my broken trunk while the wind sings hysterically to my branches and my leaves. I look back at the ragged scar on my twisted trunk to see my heart broken and exposed. I have become another trophy on the battlefield. The storm lunges again and again with all its force but I am impervious to any more pain.

I am defeated. I am broken. I am dying.