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A young girl wandered through the forest near her house, as only children can, with a mind full of dragons, goblins, ents, and fairies. In her play, she came across an old orange osage, massive and shady at its base. She rest there from the day’s play, and continued to do so each day, first for weeks, then for years.

 

She left home to pursue her studies, and then her career. When she returned home to care for her parents, she found the old osage to be in failing health as well. After she buried her parents in the family plot, she sat again beneath its shade, taking the comfort it gladly offered.

 

Over time, the osage went white, and began to crack its bark. The girl, now a lady, would water it each day, but age takes a toll harder than any hose spigot can remedy. Similarly, her family home began to show its age, with shingles falling asunder and beams becoming infested.

 

One day, a lumberjack visited, and gesturing toward the towering hardwood, as well as her crumbling home, offered a very generous price for the lumber. The lady refused with such vehemence that the lumberjack would never return. That night, the rain fell through her roof to her bedroom, and the freshwater from the sky mixed with her own salted tears.

 

The next day, the lady said a final goodbye to the old osage, and set a saw to it. After a long day of careful cutting, the old tree crashed to the forest floor, shaking loose yet a few more shingles from her home.

 

The following year was full of sawn beams, cut shingles, and all manner of small injuries of the type one only sustains while working on one’s home. In time for the first rains, the lady sat down on her porch, let out a deep sigh, and looked to the broad stump while she laid a hand on the deep amber railing from that same tree. She spoke the only words that we have for moments like those,

“Thank you.”

 

The winter was hard, but every moment in her home was dry and warm. As spring broke, the woman sat on her porch once again, hand on the railing, looking at that old stump she had sat beneath so many years ago. All of a sudden, she leapt up, running to the giant remains of the old osage. All around her, for twenty yards around, were tiny osage saplings, burst from the ground from the long winter. They all spoke the only words that we have for moments like that spring morning,

“Thank you.”

Where to start? I suppose these types of stories never have a beginning, but are a tale you carry your whole life, never happening in particular, but always playing out.

I always knew the layers were there, I was just better at ignoring them when I was younger. The trees I played in knew just as well as I did, but the whole matter concerned them far less. You know how trees are. I suppose if I kept my head in the ground and my fingers in the sky for a few hundred years, I’d be just as unconcerned.

That said, the trees seem to know that our illusions are effecting the world underneath them even better than we do. Have you ever seen them flee or abandon a place? Only the oldest and most ornery remain, the young have all long since taken to more welcoming climates.

The one I know best is the place I grew up in. The place where still no one understands why I got so worked up about a silly fort in a fallen tree nearly three hundred years older than any of us, easily. Why I cried when that tree disappeared, when no one saw me cry when my father died. The place I stood staring at the stars asking why I never cried enough. The place I accepted Death as a welcome guest, and knew I would spend a lifetime with It.

Strangely, not the same place I said goodbye to God. But that’s a different story.

The place I grew up in is a Valley of ancient Oaks that are moving away. Other plants and trees seem to sprout without difficulty, but the Oaks are clearly leaving. Poison Oak never seemed to have any trouble growing. Now there’s an introduction you don’t forget! Speaking of which, I used to cut down the Milk Thistle that grew in patches so thick and tall they stood half a meter over your head. I did it because I had a curious rage inside of me that required physical activity. Youth and hormones, I suppose, but the Milk Thistle didn’t seem to mind. They’d come back a bit smaller next year if you cut them early enough, when they were green in Spring. It was a visceral experience, and they would certainly fight back, but you could finish the job in a day or so. Not the fight they’d put up in Summer, that was a much different, more cruel fight.

Soon after that, we got a RoundUp sprayer. Now that is faster and easier than a machete, let me tell you. Now nothing grows near the roads like the Milk Thistle did, which I found out is apparently a medicinal plant. If we had harvested it at purest potency, say in the Spring, we could have made a fortune. Presumably.

I haven’t gone back to visit the oldest Oaks I know, haven’t had the heart yet. I’m a bit scared what they might say, but if there’s at least one thing I’ve learned in the last decade, it’s to respect your Elders. When I last visited, I thought I saw one we had named MotherTree (like a mothership, not terribly imaginative, I must say) that looked sick, covered far too much in that green lichen we would kick off of the bark to keep it from going beyond the first layers of bark.

Mom used to yell at us for peeling all the bark off of the trees. I never thought they seemed to mind, but I suppose she disagreed. I’m sure she looked at me as if I was insane when I apologized to it. It graciously accepted every apology I ever offered. Apparently I was quite over-reactive to punishment. It seems to me I just took everything a bit more literally than everyone intended. I suppose I still do. Maybe they should simply be more careful with their words.

Either way, it always seemed silly to me. A tree bleeds when you injure it, whether by accident or with malice. You won’t forget the injury you inflicted on it, even when it is so minor that the tree forgives you instantly.

On a completely different note, and to lighten the mood. Have you ever had the opportunity to grab a giant double handful of maple seed pods, throw them into the air, and watch them all fall around you? They planted Maples at Garin, my elementary school. But they also planted Sweet Gums, which, if you’ve had the luck not to encounter them, have seed pods that make viciously effective projectiles in schoolyard battles. To be fair, they hurt less than rocks or clay dirt clods.

Right! The Valley! That’s pretty much the whole achronological order of it. The Oaks are leaving now, and my Mom is growing a huge garden, while the rest of the hills seem to be going bare. It’s hard to say if there is really any cause and effect, or if it is just time for the Oaks to leave, but either way, the Valley will be lesser without them. Hopefully the Chestnuts can take the opportunity to grow a bit more.

It sure is something to see them migrate, though. You just keep looking around, and try as you might, not an Oak sapling in sight, not a sprout or a seedling. The most venerable die off year after year, but nothing sprouts up to take their place. Not yet at least. Nature seems to be funny like that. Even when all of the Oaks have left the Valley, there is some comfort in knowing that something will, with absolute certainty, take their place.

I don’t know if my savings will be in the bank when I check next, what my home’s value will be tomorrow on Zillow, or whether the truck will come to fill up the tank at the gas station, but I know that something will sprout up when the Oaks are gone. Speaking of which, have you ever caught a glimpse underneath the layers? Maybe in a power outage, or when the stock market crashed. Maybe when the store ran out of milk or bread, or the station out of gas? Maybe a death in the family; One of those moments when everything else falls away, and your heart, the very core and center of your existence, recognizes with absolute infallibility what is actually real and important.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m sorry. I truly am, because these next few years, perhaps these next few decades, are going to be even harder for you than they will be for everyone else. A more manageable experience to acquaint yourself with that feeling will make it much easier to handle the mundane things that will need to be done as superstructures crumble.

Also, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’d be better served going back to Facebook, as you’re not going to believe anything else I have to say.

But if you’re on the fence, if you know the feeling, or perhaps the inkling of a feeling that I’m attempting to describe, but you think to yourself, “Surely those layers will stay firmly in place! Surely the oil will continue to get pumped and refined, surely the money will continue to be created and sold by the rich!”

Well, you surely weren’t thinking that, but something less hyperbolic. I’m sorry to say, there is really no chance left in this calculation, only varying amounts of time. And no, probably not enough time for you to comfortably retire and die in peace.

I know, that wrench in your gut is telling you that I’m wrong, that I’m probably crazy. But the very presence of that pain belies the part of you that knows the truth, that knows. Doesn’t just logically conclude, but the part of your heart that sinks deep, anchors you to the Earth, and knows that we have driven this fucking thing right off the cliff as fast as we could, and the only way we’re going any higher is by burning up the booster rockets to see how high we can get, rather than using them to slow our descent.

Don’t turn away from it. Take a deep breath, and reach deep into that part. Look carefully within at it, and see for yourself if it is lying to you. Is it telling you the same thing it tells me? That your money is worth immeasurably less than the plastic it is digitally stored in. That your time, which you cash in every single day, is worth immeasurably more. That your time is actually the only thing you really have? And that you’re wasting it?

Yeah, I know that feeling too. It’s not just you. Your time has come. It’s time to do what little we can to help our friends and family in this crash. It’s time to hold tight to those we love, and cry. And laugh. Maybe tell a story. Maybe share a meal. Maybe protect and care for one another  while the edifice of inanimality crumbles, and maybe, just maybe, see that the world we love is still somehow standing when all of the layers have been peeled back.