If a tree falls in a forest, does it even make a sound?

Inspired by Italo Calvino

Yes, yes, everyone says that those years were magical times. That is, in part, very true, but you all are so young that you can’t remember the despair that follows that sort of exploratory marvel. I was there! You must take yourself to the position of the birds, the worms, all the fleas, even the moss on the bark. It was not quite so magical for them. In fact, one could hear their murmurs of disapproval whenever a newcomer stepped on the wrong root.

Oh, people were much smaller at that time. My brothers and I used to dig under the roots of the trees. The dirt was so soft, so forgiving to our slender bodies that we slipped right under. Then we entered the complicated maze of tree roots with the absence of light – a challenge indeed. The roots under the dirt, well, some were as thin as a strand of your hair! I’ve heard you must take extra care not to disrupt those, as they could upset the tree and lead to problems. What problems, I’m not sure. There is a lot I don’t know about the ways of the trees.

Once I figured out the path of the roots, I found the opening at the base of the trunk. It took me countless days of practice, lots of trial and error, in order to find the small circle at the base of the tree that opened for us to fit within. It was all under the soil, so worms crawling up your nose was not uncommon. Once, I discovered an entire family of ants lodged in my scalp.

Once inside the trunk, a whole new world opened up. I pulled on the inner bark and shimmied my dirt-crusted body up. No matter how many times I traveled through the tree, I was still speechless by the utter silence, a quiet like never before. You enter the thoughts of the tree; you hear their stories. I once had a tree that didn’t appreciate my adventures very much. You may wonder how I know this, but it is because once you are so close, once you gain the trust to enter, you can never unlearn the emotions of the trees and how they talk to each other. The frequencies are different from the human languages and much more complex, but after a while, my ear adjusted, and the beautiful tongue of the leafy beings infiltrated my mind and never left.

My favorite trees were the great oaks, or no, maybe the giant sequoias. Yes, the sequoias and the redwoods were the best storytellers. They were so high up that you could get lost in the bark. Sometimes I would be forced to chew the moss and drink the sap after being stuck for hours. The redwoods didn’t mind, though the oaks did. The oaks were the most intricately designed, with a rich past and many stories to tell, but they were cruel. The oaks made their bark intentionally sharp to dissuade visitors, though we all knew that they secretly wanted to be heard and explored.

One never knows true magic until they hear the illusions of the past through the voice of a tree. The day that the trees fell hurt me all the way through my blood. When it happened, I was sitting inside a Douglas fir, smelling the bark and closing my eyes for a quick nap. All of sudden, the worms fell out of their holes, and one by one each precious root upended itself and the whole tree flipped to the side. My head banged the side and I could feel the Douglas scream in agony, with the vibrational cries echoing to all of the surrounding trees, creating a chorus of pain.

The most hopeless part of this is that people don’t believe in the crisis of the falling trees. I’m too old to try now, but I’m sure that if you dug under the dirt of the few trees left, you wouldn’t be able to shimmy up the trunk. There aren't enough of them for a conversation. Too much history was lost. Some people, the truly crazy ones at that, don’t believe that the trees ever fell at all. Well, I was there. I felt the agony of the howling branches and the leaves pleading for mercy until they dropped to the forest floor, lost and dying.

What’s that? You want to hear the trees’ stories? Oh, my darling. I don’t have the words for that. Maybe one day, the trees will welcome us in again. Maybe one day, we will hear the words of the fallen trees.

Sarah Walcott '22

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