A SHARED EXPERIENCE
Nik Morton
A
story for Easter
My brethren once numbered in the
millions. But that was a long time ago.
Racial memory
tells me of great apes who could swing through our forests from dawn until dusk
for many days, seemingly without end.
Now, though,
there are no forests here, and no great apes.
Only desert. Our memory goes back even further than mankind's. We trees share in each other's experiences,
down the years, until perhaps the last tree is no more.
The
decimation of our kind began when men started to build ships. The Phoenicians, the Greeks and Romans, the
Turks, all amassed formidable fleets at the expense of our great forests in North Africa .
Denuded of
trees, the land degenerated into desert.
Through our
worldwide network we have learned all of mankind's languages, though some of
their naming-words are beyond our combined experience: it is a veritable Babel
Unlike we
brethren of the green, mankind forgot how to commune through the ether; and
they never harnessed a racial memory.
Instead they discovered the transmission of thoughts by written means,
first on stone then papyrus and parchment and paper made from our wood. This written medium enabled them to communicate
from beyond the grave: they considered that these invented books were a kind of
immortality.
And,
inevitably, their hunger for printed words took its toll on our brethren too.
I
remember so much, as do we all. Our
lives do not stop when we are felled.
Our senses enter another, different phase, that is all. We can still perceive through our pores,
detecting sounds, smells, temperatures and even, sometimes, thoughts. If fire takes one of us while we are rooted
in the earth, then that tree is no more; but its experience of the world is not
lost, its soul is within us all.
The carpenter's hands were gentle, almost
loving as he shaped a part of me into a baby's crib. He was a gifted artisan and though I was
shaved into many separate pieces I could not blame him: out of my natural
perfection he carved another beautiful form.
A part of my life would share in the growth of another being, imbibing
the infant's intellectual awakening.
Other parts of
me were transported around the land
of Galilee
In exchange for
the decimation of our millions we shared in new experiences and feelings.
Another
part of me encountered that same carpenter a number of years later. His blood stained me too as he painfully
struggled to carry me on his back up the hill to Golgotha .
Strangely,
I ached, as did we all in his shared experience, as we sensed the carpenter's
agony.
Yet there was no
hate in him. He was strong: I could feel
a power capable of felling all our kind at an instant's thought. But he was in control. He knew what he was doing. His purpose was steadfast, inspiring.
All my brethren
in the vicinity swayed as the precursor of a storm whipped their leaves. This was something we had never known
before.
Of all the
multitudes of people who had impinged on our very old memory, none had affected
us like this man.
When they
crucified the carpenter, nailing his wrists into my wood, and his essence
mingled with my own, I knew that no matter what privations our brethren
suffered, we would survive and even flourish.
A time would
come when trees would be nurtured in their own habitat.
It would take a
long time in arriving, but it would come to pass.
And
I know one day I shall see that carpenter again.
***
Previously
published in the Easter edition of the Costa
TV Times, 2010.
Copyright
Nik Morton, 2014.
***
My collection of Spanish themed crime short
stories, Spanish Eye, is available from Crooked Cat Publishing.
Spanish
Eye, which can be purchased post-free world-wide
from here
and the Spanish
Eye e-book bought from Amazon com here
or bought from Amazon co uk here
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