This Tree Will Save the World

“T

his tree will save the world,” said Lindon. He had in him many stories of the temperate rainforest that was now leagues and years away and shared them generously with his granddaughter, Mica. He told her, “There is no death in the forest. At least, no death that is separate from life, from being alive. You may see a nurse log and think it a zombie, or else the brains being devoured, that the rest of the canopy is just a parasite wearing the skin of what has come before. But someday, when this tree saves the world and you get to experience a real forest, you’ll know in your bones that isn’t true.”

While Mica appreciated his stories, she was suspicious of them too. As long as Mica could remember, her grandfather Lindon had tended to the “great” tree. That tree was supposed to save the world, but to her eyes it was still quite small.

It had been planted the day her mother was born, almost 40 years ago, but still only came up to the height of Mica’s 12-year-old ribs. She told her grandfather this, but Lindon simply replied, “Some of the oldest, hardiest trees are the smallest. Their bodies are dense with nourishment and compact against harsh environments. You know a little of what this one has weathered—what you have weathered thus far—the hot and cold, the deluge and drought.—I do not judge what you will become based on how you were as a babe. I trust that the nourishment that I and your mother and all the rest of us have given you means that you will outgrow even the most fanciful dreams we might have for you. You must care for the tree in the same way, let possibility shape its growth.” He said the last with a subtle, amused chastisement, like when she was four and had dumped their cabin’s greywater all over him when he’d been napping in the sun because her mother had just tried to teach her about dehydration and she’d been worried about grandpa. Like then, she felt that there was some hidden adult perspective she was being laughed at for missing even though the subtleties of it had not been explained to her.

“But is it meant to shelter us? Feed us? How will it save the world if it is so small?” Mica would ask, and her grandfather would just smile an elder’s wise and knowing smile until she became bored of his refusal to answer her questions.

When he was gone, the tree remained, and as she loved her grandfather, she loved the tree, and tended to it.

Despite Mica’s skepticism toward the tree, she loved the hours she spent by her grandfather’s side tending to it. They would spend hours on long walks through the forest where he taught her to identify fungal and insect infestations, how to mitigate their spread, and how to use those knowledges in their village’s other cultivations and in foraging. Later, when he could no longer handle the unexpected and rough terrain, she would practice memorizing and describing her environment to recount to him upon her return. It made her mind sharp, and her appreciation for the world around her sharper. When he was gone, the tree remained, and as she loved her grandfather, she loved the tree, and tended to it. She became its primary guardian, and spent an hour every day ensuring it had enough water, nitrogen, and love. She inspected it weekly for rot, infection, or infestation. She tested the soil with a quasi-religious fervour, and harvested from it in sustainable measures: bark for weaving and crafts, nuts and berries and syrup for nourishment, the air of its oxygen and the shade of its leaves sitting under its branches—each in only the amount it could spare. She did so no matter what kind of storm raged, either without or within—when her cousin Willow died cliff jumping because the waters had become too far out and too shallow, or when the village fractured in the wake of the Ecclestone's deciding to try to find a city further East along with medicine for their child, the tree was always there. She and Ina pledged their lifelong friendship beneath its branches when it seemed all the rest of their generation were committed to other kinds of partnerships. Ina was a gardener in her own right, and very clever with mushroom cultivars. Her younger brother Basalt married his sweetheart there too. Then their babe Daisy had her first birthday beneath its boughs, and then all the rest of their family followed suit—introducing their children to their ancestors—first Lindon, and then later to her mother and father too when they passed. She raged at it at times—in the drought of her 26th and 40th years in particular, jealous it could suck up water from deep underground when she and her people could not. But she could never abandon it. She did as her grandfather taught her, and when the children all the way through to the youngest—Terra—asked her about the tree, she would repeat as her grandfather did, “This tree will save the world.”

As she continued to grow, the tree did too. It surpassed her own height eventually, and did not begin to shrink as she did when she grew old like her grandfather before her. It was no great giant of either history or myth. It could not rival skyscrapers, but it did provide some reasonable shelter, and over the years, had created quite the coverings and feasts with the blessings of its bark and fruit.

Tending to the great tree was always a communal effort. Ina had taken over when Mica was laid up with fever and during the long, painful months after she had broken her ankle, and Daisy, her niece had almost apprenticed under her, until she discovered that the structures and skeleton of the human body were even more appealing to her than the structures of root and branch, bark and xylem. As it and its story grew, all the labouring and living people of their community would often pay the tree a visit. They would aid in the fighting of fires and the fetching of water, and help its terraforming efforts by transplanting other helpful flora and fauna, and working toward the balance of the whole ecosystem in which the tree lived. But still, when Mica grew old it became clear the great tree would become Terra’s responsibility.

From the moment xe was old enough to toddle, the tree was the only place xe wanted to be. Xe found nothing more fascinating than walking around its roots for hours with a magnifying glass, looking at the bark and insects. Xe would pore over old texts extolling the virtues of the tree, and try to fill in snippets of old stories and how trees like this produced great magics for ancient heroes with even more fantastical and outlandish suppositions. Mica wove a braid of the tree’s bark for each babe blessed beneath its boughs, but where most would simply let their parents leave it in a box or upon the mantle, Terra wore xyrs like a bracelet and would sooth xemself with it, rubbing it against xyr face to fall asleep. Xe was not nearly so skeptical of its greatness as Mica had been. As a child, xe easily accepted all her teachings like, “The relationship with the Earth is the longest one you’ll ever have. I remember you digging your fingers in the dirt and eating clovers as a child, blinking at the sun through the leaves. And maybe at the end, like me, you’ll carve a piece of one of these beauties for it to keep supporting you just like I have.” Then she would wiggle her impeccably carved cane a little in demonstration, and Terra would nod sagely and solemnly, far too serious for xyr age. Occasionally, Mica would frown at this response, because it felt like every generation had so much more on their shoulders, and Terra bore it so much more easily and so much younger than she had, but she tried hard not to let Terra see anything other than how proud she was of Terra’s attention, and patience.

One day, after Ina had passed, Mica watched the sun lose its harshness as it filtered through the branches to shine upon the newest babe being feted under the tree with Terra leading the ceremony. In that moment, she believed that perhaps with Terra’s caretaking, the great tree could save the world one day, if the generations of caretakers could continue to be sustained, if there was enough water left in the world to feed its roots, and that water could be found, and the fires could continue to be kept at bay. The list of ifs seemed long but she was grateful to die with the small hope that she had grown into.

Many were the days where Terra had to choose between a little starvation and a little over-farming of the tree, where the sun beat such that xe was tempted to take just a little more bark that a shirt might be made to protect one more person from its blazing rays.

Five generations was already a long time to sustain something though, especially something as delicate and necessary as hope in a dying world. Lindon, Mica, and Terra’s family were one of the few that remained in the place that could no longer truly be called a forest. People left, or died, or simply refused to procreate. Though Terra worried about the future of the tree and their community, xe could never shame someone for such a choice. Nonetheless, to xem it felt like there was now death in the forest. Many were the days where Terra had to choose between a little starvation and a little over-farming of the tree, where the sun beat such that xe was tempted to take just a little more bark that a shirt might be made to protect one more person from its blazing rays.

The tree grew even larger than it had been in Mica’s day. When their partner, Ondine, had first arrived in the village, she had joked that it would make good timber for an opulent house in this day and age, if not those gone by. It was almost enough of an insult that Terra at first did not give her the time of day, though later Ondine realized what an error she had made, and apologized profusely. Still, Terra found xemself returning to that suggestion. It had made xem consider the tree not as a tradition, or a representation of both the sacredness of the past, and the possibility of the future, but as a thing. That prompted a nagging doubt to wiggle in xyr mind that after so many years it still did not seem capable of any miracles. Where it was large to xem as a child, now a tree of any size seemed so pitifully small against the vastness of what they combatted—storm, disease, famine. The tree did not seem capable of turning back the clock on climate change by itself. It was not a generation ship. It was not a habitable time capsule. It did not seem like it ever would become these things. It felt impossible to imagine that any tree, even this one, that had been their family’s work for generations, could save the world.

And then a storm came. What once was millennial, had become generational. Terra remembered Mica telling stories of how in the storms of her early childhood, she and Lindon would cover the tree with a lean-to, protecting it from the elements. The tree was too large for that now, and the storm’s only saving grace was that the lashing water of the hurricane kept the winds from picking up the ever-present wildfire and swirling it into a firenado. The town bunkered down in a cave for the storm. Terra worried over xyr rope of woven bark—something xe did not take out very much these days, now that Mica was gone and it was even more precious to xem now than it had been when xe was a child. Xe muttered prayers under xyr breath day and night until the storm broke and the small community emerged to clean up the wreckage.

Despite xyr work with the tree, Terra had always hated cleaning. Always hated the inevitability of it—the fact that clean was forever only a temporary state. It was a hatred second only to feeding xyrself. Xe resented that hunger was an ever-present monster always needing satiation, but at least the hunger itself kept pressing that need. Cleaning was even worse, with no deep-seated reminder of its necessity. And how was one meant to clean up after a catastrophe?

The trunk was swollen in places with grooves like black lightning running through the bark where the heat had stretched it out. A great crack spilled its guts unevenly, and the whole thing now listed to one side, threatening other dwellings.

When Terra emerged after the storm, xe saw the tree there, some of its limbs torn off and scattered. One great bough had crashed through the roof of xyr cabin. The trunk was swollen in places with grooves like black lightning running through the bark where the heat had stretched it out. A great crack spilled its guts unevenly, and the whole thing now listed to one side, threatening other dwellings. Terra felt xyr heart similarly bursting, the hot flames of sorrow burning at the edges, a dull ache within resigned to the fact that this wound could be neither cauterized nor healed. This tree could not, would not save this world. Terra’s great-aunt’s, and great-great-grandfather’s tree, xyr community’s hope, the world’s hope had been felled, and there was nothing xe could do about it. It was not xyr fault. There was nothing xe could have done. But still, as xe helped the others pull its corpse the rest of the way down, away from the dwellings that survived, xe wanted to tell them to stop, that it might still be saved. The others might have believed xem, but xe couldn’t bear to try. It was one thing to retell the sayings and beliefs of xyr ancestors. It was another to tell a lie that xe did not even believe. Where was that line between hope and fantasy? Xe was no longer sure.

There was little time to grieve, though xe was not the only one to keenly feel the loss. But other of their fellows died in the storm, and people’s homes and ways of life were lost alongside the great tree. All these things and people were alike: they had been barely struggling along and now would have to adapt to new ways of continuing that struggle. Terra felt xe had a hole in xyr heart where caring for the tree used to be. Xe despaired, but nonetheless threw xemself into other things: mentoring children, harvesting bugs and pickling dandelions. Xe found solace in other loves in the wake of the wreckage. Cliff had been widowed by the storm, and in their shared grief he found solace in Ondine and Terra, and together the three of them built a new life in the wreckage of the old, and started a family.

When Terra’s daughter was born, xe felt yet another pang for the tree. Both because it could not save the world for xyr child, but also because xe could no longer pass the tree’s care down to her or to her descendants. It felt like a lineage of story, of purpose, was broken.

Over the years the scorch marks had become less stark, blending into the general decay, and the bark itself had feathered and grown soft in places, like how it was in the rope given to the babes.

Then, one day, xyr daughter, little Sylvie learned to run. She laughed delightedly at the chaos she caused all of her parents. She ran toward the felled tree. It had been separated into three sections: the great branch that had crashed through Terra’s cabin, the trunk and body that the village had pulled the rest of the way over, and the base section where the roots still had half a hold in the ground, leaving a stump perpetually at an angle. Over the years the scorch marks had become less stark, blending into the general decay, and the bark itself had feathered and grown soft in places, like how it was in the rope given to the babes. Terra had not allowed the others to harvest it since the felling, despite the community’s great needs. It was the least xe felt xe could do to honour the memory of the tree and all its caretakers—to allow it to stay as it once would have in the forest, before the accelerated interventions of the industrial revolution that started this whole sorry downslide. Where they lived was not a true forest though, and once the storm crushed Terra’s hope, xe had not even dreamed to think that perhaps the tree might survive as trees once did, as a nurse log or hanging garden to the next generation of green. All she could see was death in xyr forest.

That is, until Sylvie screamed in delight, “Look Tata!” And Terra saw: the tiniest of seedlings cracked through the bark, the palest blush of moss began to blanket the surrounding areas, the smallest of fungi were sporing where the tree met the ground, at a place where one of xyr ancestors once harvested bark.

Terra found xemself tearing up at the wonder, joy, and hope xyr child still had. This joy was a thing xe wanted to cultivate, to preserve. Somehow, that gave xem hope as well, as the tree once did. Slowly, meaning returned, like lichen accumulating: the interaction of air, sunlight, mist, and time somehow created life where there wasn’t any before.

Sylvie loved the log, and often returned to it, marvelling at the seedlings’ hardiness, even if it took the first over ten years to grow even a few feet in height. At first there was only one, but eventually, there were many. The log became a veritable garden, and Sylvie found she loved the stories her Tata told her about her ancestors, and how this log was once meant to save the world.

She told the next generation, “Every great cedar was once a sapling, every great city, an outpost. Every civilization had to grow.”

In the end, Terra died contented. In the end, xe became certain in a way even Mica wasn’t that perhaps this tree did save the world after all. It was a lesson too long to learn in any one life; it was a lesson that needed to be rediscovered, relearned all the time: Not what the log, the tree, the world is, but what it cultivates. What it is to cultivate. What the care teaches us.

In time, Sylvie developed her own kind of wisdom. She did not know all of history, and yet, the history and platitudes she’d been taught by her elders still felt like true knowledge in her bones, so she repeated the stories. She told the next generation, “Every great cedar was once a sapling, every great city, an outpost. Every civilization had to grow.” When they struggled, when it felt like their community might crumble, she reminded them, “Do not fear the rubble, but do not seek it out either. Our tree teaches us boundary between life and death is not a hard stop. It is just another point on the spectrum, something along the continuum of eternity. Continuity is an aim and a desire, regardless of death. This is why we must cultivate good seeds.”

Sylvie became an elder in her own right, and maintained her care of the log, collecting any water that could be spared to try to imitate the rainforest of days gone by. She built her life in the shells of the lives of her forebears— she was a new garden growing in the soil of both their successes and their mistakes. She was known for sharing a saying, a truism, a myth, with anyone who would listen, even when they questioned how her words could possibly be true. She would gesture to the log, the saplings, the lichen, the moss, the fungi, and tell everyone, even those who had heard her words a hundred times before, “This tree will save the world. This tree will save the world.”