Dead tree

“ The world dead, indeed! What more vigorous and full of life than the mosses covering the rich wood-mould? Before me, too, lies a long-fallen tree cloaked in moss greener than the summer pastures. Not the sea alone possesses transforming magic; there is also “a wood-change into something rich and strange.” Never does the thought of death and decay centre about such a sight. The chickadee drops from the bushes above, looks the moss-clad log over carefully, and, when again poised on an overhanging branch, loudly lisps its praises. ”

“ It stands alone and inviolate—a Sacred Tree. In the damp ground at the tree's foot is a small dark hole, the sides of which are roughly formed by stones overhung with moss and grass. A cover of unwrought stone lies beside it, and it is filled up with dead leaves. This is the healing-well "of power unspeakable in cases of lunacy". All the brief space is circled round by an impenetrable mesh of dripping bough and briar; ferns and grass luxuriate in the dim light; ivy and honeysuckle strands cling and fall; and damp depths of fallen leaves silence every step. ”

“ Green living buds are everywhere huddling close in their drowsy defenses. Even the fruit merchant could distinguish between the dreaming and the dead, or, at any rate, between the unripe and the rotten. And as he looked, two thoughts scurried like rats out of the wainscot of his mind. These lean shrunken twigs, these massive vegetable bones—the tree was dead! And up there— He shifted rapidly to and fro in order to secure an uninterrupted view of a kind of huddling shape up aloft there, an object that appeared to be stooping crazily forward as if on a similar quest in respect to himself. ”

“ The trees, which a few months ago were green and beautiful and in the fall all laden with fruit, are now all naked and bare, and if you were to go out into the orchard or forest you could not tell the difference between a dead tree, and all the others which seem to be dead. ”

“ On the dead tree, a full despondent flock; ”

“ I do not mean for a moment to assert, or even to suggest, that every individual sacred tree grows or ever grew on the grave of a dead person. But I do mean to say that, so far as I can see, the notion of the sanctity of trees or plants could only have arisen in the first place from the reverence paid to trees or plants which actually sprang from the remains of the dead, and so were regarded, like everything else that came out of the tomb, as embodiments or avatars of the dead man's spirit. ”

“ But I’ve hardly seen a dead tree since I’ve been in these woods. One would almost think that there were some—er—balance. Some arrangement of—er—well—I can’t explain it. . . . It beats me entirely.”
I did not, at the time, completely understand what he meant. And yet it did seem as though every one of these giant plants that rose about us led a life of peaceful growth, undisturbed by rot, by blight or by disease.
“There was more movement in the limbs of the trees”
Suddenly in our march we found ourselves at the end of the wooded section. ”

“ At this place there was an accumulation of bark-bits from the trunk, together with fallen twigs and needles from the dead tree-top. Thus a dead, inflammable tree in the woods is kindling which at any moment may become a torch and set fire to the surrounding green forest. Although fires frequently sweep through and destroy a green forest, they commonly have their start among dead trees or trash. ”

“ The only variety was a dead tree, and the only apparent difference between the living and the dead was, that in this case the straight perpendicular lines were crossed by lines as straight, which were diagonal; for the dead trees for the most part reclined against their living neighbours, very much to the detriment of the latter. ”

“ A garden being the abode of the dead, a tree came to be the symbol of death in that of life. On the sepulchral monuments, the tree of the Hesperides and the strigil are the most constant emblems—the one representing immortality, the other purity. At Nineveh, the tree of life is associated with the living, not the dead. ”

“ In a few years, however, this sombre scene assumes a more cheerful aspect. An under-growth springs up, that soon conceals the skeletons of the dead trees: plants and shrubs appear—often of different genera and species from those that hitherto usurped the soil—and the ruin is no longer apparent. The mournful picture gives place to one of luxuriant sweetness: the more brilliant sheen of the young trees and shrubs, now covering the ground, and contrasting agreeably with the sombre hues of the surrounding forest. ”

“ Instead of that they keep on growing, and of course the top of the growing tree keeps on reaching up all the time toward the light. No matter if it is bent flat, it tends to turn upward, so that all of it beyond the place where the dead tree is pressing on it grows straight, just like all the other trees around it. ”

“ Thousands of dead trees are still standing, shooting up their tall gray forms, stripped of bark, of foliage, and of branches; still, they cling with a lingering tenacity to their old abiding places, as if loath to resign themselves to the ruin which is every where reigning around them, and although despoiled of foliage, as if they still loved to linger on the spot which once bore witness to their magnificence. ”

“ On one side, it is changing into dead wood. On the other side, it is changing into dead bark. The new wood is alive, and the new bark. Between them is something neither wood nor bark, but just living tree-stuff. The green leaves also are alive, and the green twigs, and the blossoms, and the growing buds. But at least half of every living tree is already dead; while the larger and longer lived a tree is, the smaller proportion of it is alive at one time.
How much of a hen’s egg is alive? ”

“ Higher in the tree, an unsightly gaping hollow presents itself, left after the fall of some dead and useless limb and this, collecting the rain water from each successive shower, has caused the gradual undermining of the tree and hurried it to its approaching death. ”

“ In shadows black as pitch, like these, any inconceivably evil creature might be in covert. If the tree alive could decoy an alien fauna to its succulent nectar, the tree dead might well invite even less pleasing ministrations. ”

“ Through the window I can see
Rooks above the cherry-tree,
Sparrows in the violet bed,
Bramble-bush and bumble-bee,
And old red bracken smoulders still
Among boulders on the hill,
Far too bright to seem quite dead.
But old Death, who can't forget,
Waits his time and watches yet,
Waits and watches by the door. ”

“ Of course, dead trees are the home of all sorts of ‘creepy-crawly’ things, and as the log warmed up and the fire eat into the decayed heart and drove thick hot smoke through the cracks and corridors and secret places in the logs the occupants would come scuttling out at the butt ends. ”

“ One is that the tree may be already dead. The other is that there is only one possible way of seeing it again alive. Only when it is planted finally in one fixed place on the face of the earth, will it ever bear fruit or blossom or become a greenhouse of birds. ”

“ But after a while these dead trees get white and weathered, and the dead roots that hold them in the ground keep on rotting and rotting, and at last these roots become so weak that there's nothing to support the tall trunk that stands there, and then with every big wind that comes blowing along, some of the trees get blown over, and fall to the ground. ”

“ And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,—
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know not how such things can be!—
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; ”

“ By the common process of ringbarking, dead trees are left standing over great areas of forest land, vast white skeleton armies, a strange and desolate sight. If the land is to be used for arable purposes, the trees have to be removed; but for pasture, when the trees are dead, and can no longer deprive the grass of nourishment and moisture, they remain standing for years, till in time with the process of the seasons, and the attacks of insects, the hard wood decays and crumbles away. ”

“ The decay of these dead trees is strangely slow; prostrate pines have been known to last fifty years, undecayed, still preserving their sap; and upright gray shafts often remain standing for years, until one comes to know them as familiarly as the living trees. ”

“ The lower branches of a tree, which do not receive the necessary exercise from the wind, and the necessary vitalizing stimulus of the sun, gradually atrophy, and wither, die, and drop off; likewise do unused and unstimulated organs and faculties of the body shrink toward atrophy and pale toward death. The only part of a tree that is alive is where the sap runs. All the rest of the tree is dead. ”

“ They hold that just as, when the man dies, the kra of the man enters a new-born child, and the soul, or ghost-man, goes to Dead-land; so, when the tree dies, the kra, so to speak, of the tree enters a seedling, and the ghost-tree goes to join the ranks of the shadowy forest in Dead-land. ”

“ Several stems generally rise from the same root, and it is a remarkable fact that the older trees can easily be known by the dead branches, which snap across, and then fall downward, so that their tips rest on the ground, while at the point of fracture they are still attached to the tree. ”

“ Take it the year round, the deadest trees in the woods are the livest and fullest of fruit—for the naturalist. Dr. Holmes had a passion for big trees; the camera-carriers hunt up historic trees; boys with deep pockets take to fruit-trees: but dead trees, since I developed a curiosity for dark holes, have yielded me the most and largest crops. ”

“ A coarse grass grew here and there between the rocks by the water-side, but there was no other vegetation on the bleak crags, though of course the mysterious dead trees, as everywhere else on this island, were lying thickly all around. The foul birds and the land-crabs were the sole inhabitants of this solitude.
We now proceeded to make ourselves at home for the night. I collected the branches and trunks of the dead trees and built up a goodly pile of firewood, while the doctor prepared our supper. We had no saucepan with us, so the pannikin had to do duty for one. ”

“ The colossal white trunk of a birch-tree, of which the crest had been snapped off by a gale or a tempest, rose out of this green maze and stood up like a round shining marble column; the sharp slanting angle, in which it ended instead of in a capital, looked dark against the snowy whiteness of the trunk, like a cap or a blackbird. A hop, after smothering bushes of elder, mountain-ash and hazel, and then running along the top of the whole palisade, finally darted upwards and twined round half of the broken birch-tree. ”

“ Half the province gaily promenaded under the trees, dressed up in their best, and no one felt it strange and sinister when out of the dark shade of the trees a branch stood out theatrically in the artificial light, robbed of its bright green, and the night sky looked darker and more gloomy and twenty times more terrible through it, and the austere tree-tops with their leaves quivering in the heights as they vanished into the impenetrable darkness seemed to resent the tawdry brilliance that lighted up their roots below. ”

“ It is one wide image of death, as if the angel of destruction had passed over the valley. The sight even of a felled tree is painful; still more is that of the fallen forest, with all its green branches on the ground, withering, silent, and at rest, where once they glittered in the dew and the sun, and trembled in the breeze. ”

“ And these dull grey mutilated trees look quite pathetic in their pale nakedness, leaning hither and thither, and finding support across one another, as if falling in their last agony, or lying dead and uprooted on the ground. ”

“ The "Fool i' the Forest" moralised not more quaintly over the wounded deer, than I could sometimes over those prostrate and mangled trees. I remember, in one of the clearings to-day, one particular tree which had been burned and blasted; only a blackened stump of mouldering bark—a mere shell remained; and from the centre of this, as from some hidden source of vitality, sprang up a young green shoot, tall and flourishing, and fresh and leafy. I looked and thought of hope! Why, indeed, should we ever despair? Can Heaven do for the blasted tree what it cannot do for the human heart? ”

“ Therefore the oldest and most perfect unscarred trees are found on ground that is nearly level, while those growing on hillsides, against which falling branches roll, are always deeply scarred on the upper side, and as we have seen are sometimes burned down. The saddest thing of all was to see the hopeful seedlings, many of them crinkled and bent with the pressure of winter snow, yet bravely aspiring at the top, helplessly perishing, and young trees, perfect spires of verdure and naturally immortal, suddenly changed to dead masts. ”

“ She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove; graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preying at its heart. We find it suddenly withering, when it should be most fresh and luxuriant. We see it drooping its branches to the earth, and shedding leaf by leaf, until, wasted and perished away, it falls even in the stillness of the forest; and as we muse over the beautiful ruin, we strive in vain to recollect the blast or thunderbolt that could have smitten it with decay. ”