The Last Remains of Trees

Tree stumps have a beauty all their own.  If you only see them as remnants of the beautiful green trees they once were, you might miss it.  See the movement in the roots above, the way they turn around the centre as if they are dancing.  The salt water that touches their tips at high tide will never quench their thirst, but it matters not.  Their thirst these days is for the music in the winds and the songs of seagulls.

Covered in moss in damp woods, this stump was in a state of decay when I first saw it twenty years ago in my backyard.  It’s still providing hiding places for tiny mammals and a surface for lichens to grow on.  There’s no reason to rush its demise from the forest floor. 

This stump found behind Rainbow Haven beach has been doused in salt water so many times over the years, that it looks and feels more like stone than wood.  I can barely conjure up the image of the boughed tree it once was.  I even wonder if it remembers birds singing in its branches, rain falling on its leaves or warm summer breezes swaying it softly in the sunshine.

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.  ~John Muir

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