When trees fall in forests.....

One morning I was in the forest packing up camp after a drizzly night in a rainforest national park. We were six hours deep into the forest. Eighteen kilometers in to a block of emerald green that stretched for 260 kilometres to the north, west, and south.

It's dark beneath the canopy but once the sun reaches a morning point it sheds heavy light down through the gaps in the branches and leaves.

The wide shafts of light begin to show the steam rise. It's cool, quiet and subdued.

While stuffing my pack with the last of my gear a deep, heavy 'crack' shuddered through the ground and the air beneath the undergrowth. Dewy drops shivered from the leaves all around us. I froze! My mate Dave and I just stared at each other, mouths agape, waiting, not knowing what was happening or coming next.

A death groan sang up from beneath our feet and began to spread through the forest. It rose up into a hammering timber cacophony until there was nothing but noise all around and then it peaked with a thundering crash....a frozen instant and then a gentle taper of crackling branches and rustling leaves descended in a slow fall until gradually a sound like a wave on sand at the beach petered out into the quiet of falling leaves and the hollow of a space left empty.

A tree as round as a living room with its canopy one hundred and twenty feet from the ground had fallen in slow motion about sixty feet from me and Dave. It opened up a keyhole the size of three house blocks in the roof of the trees for the sun to come through. Vines and inter twining branches throughout the mesh of the canopy brought down a few neighboring trees as well.

Birds had stopped screeching and the emptiness found thousands of leaves fluttering down through the fresh sunlight like some drab olive lime green kaleidoscope. My whole vision became movement upon movement, colours upon colours, a gentle breathing out and collapse of violence and activity in a space more remembered for the miniscule crawlings of small life within small life. The growth of moss, the humdrum of bugs and the frenetic pace of snails was suspended for an instant.  The tree had fallen across a small stream that we had rock-hopped over the day before but due to the rain the previous night had swollen to three times its size. The tree had come down on its side, it had split open like ripe fruit, a pulpy timber bridge had been created across that expansive forceful stream, big enough for seven people to stand atop without need for jostling. The water rose, swelled and pushed the softer portions of timber on their way down the valley, but the iron-most lengths of the tree fell silent, settled heavily into the earth and water, and took their place. I'm sure theyre still there now.

It was one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed in my life. It was so surreal, so powerful, so shockingly violent and brief in an environment that has always seemed to me to embody peace, unity, and the quiet undercurrents of a humming natural power. A place that seemed to change as i have grown, smoothly and daily, without ripples, dependably, but with intrusions that amaze and capture your attention. There is no place exempt from crashing violence, it grows from the ground...with time..it falls from the sky.

As quickly as it happened it faded. We wandered around in amazement, looking through the space that had opened up, feeling the heat of the sun pounding down into this new oasis. On seeing all the tiny seedlings of trees that before in the gloom we had not noticed, it changed from being a moment of destruction and loss into a 'birth'. The sun now called forth the striving of a thousand small plants to compete for the right to stand tall in that place that had just been surrendered. In years to come another tree would stand and spread its branches  a hundred feet above the soil.

It took us six hours to walk back out of that valley and to hit the tarmac road that signals civilization.

I know now that when trees fall in forests they make beautiful sounds, loud, frightening beautiful sounds!

Sometimes I think back to that morning as i go about my daily life, when I'm so caught up I feel like I'm suffocating in a forest of people and words and noise and confusion.

 I like knowing there are places on earth filled with stillness and quietude that are not immune to destruction and chaos, but thrive on it,  allow it, welcome it and grow and are reborn from it.

Funny, that tree could have fallen anywhere, in any direction. Could've even fallen on top of my head. Hahaha...truly...really...that'd be worth a laugh! But it didn't (thank the gods!).

 People say we should find things in our lives to be grateful for. I feel grateful for being present that morning. It feels like I was witness to a force, a power, like evolution in motion, taking giant strides across the earth. I don't know the words for it.

It's like I saw no thing, but I felt a passing, a breeze on my cheek, a movement just beyond my field of vision that i didnt quite see but knew had been there. I felt i had been touched.

It was a good experience. cant say much more coz i dont know what to say...it doesnt happen every day. I loved being there. It's still there now, in my heart,  that tree is falling, those leaves are falling, the sun is shining, I'm hearing the crashing...and i'm just seeing it all happen, so gracefully... theres nothing i can do...i just witness...and im so very grateful...