How to Grieve a Fallen Tree

3 MIN READ

By RICHARD GIYE
www.nordis.net

The year opened with the devastation left by the storm. In Sadanga, I counted ten fallen pine trees in our talama – a land gifted to my parents’wedding. I offered a prayer to the biggest tree right at the center of the land – about thirty feet high, with the widest trunk, and the most robust branches – nearing a hundred years old. 

The violent storm from what violent seas it came from uprooted the base of the tree, and I could only hear its defeated sound after crashing at night of the storm. The other younger trees fell like sticks in the sand, unable to see what brighter years might come to them there at the highest peak of Sacasacan mountain. 

Barely two months later, the felled trees began to shed, turning their deep green needles to oak-red. The bushes, ferns, and fruit trees below them were now long buried, soaking in the harsh weather, contending with their fate on the ground. The birds who used to seek refuge under their shed came circling above the clear sky – orphaned, restlesss and homeless. 

There was nothing I could do but prune their branches and make good use of them in our household. I sought my cousins’ help; they are carpenters who turn logs into various pieces of home furniture. 

One brought his chainsaw and measured the felled trees in varying lengths, depending on their future use. I was forced to enter their mind and saw through the funeral of trees – our wooden cabin with doubled walls, with a sala set, with bed tables whose posts shaped like a woman’s legs – smooth and varnished. 

For days, I watched how my cousins made the chainsaw sing, serenading our quiet village in slow rhythm – with an occasional gunshot from the distant mountains, somewhere, a hunter made a boar bleed. 

I made fire from pitch wood, chopped meat on a slab, and cooked our meals on a three-stone burner. The smoke sifts through the webbed surroundings. At times, it rises to cloud the eyes of the homeless birds, and between breaks we share stories, lingering a quarter second, or at the end of every sentence we stumble to acknowledge nature’s grief.

So, I listened to their stories of journeying in the mountains, in the neighboring towns, on courting women, on fighting other tribes, on killing enemies, and every time grief strikes, the contours of their faces change. Eyes cold at the cadaver of trees, brows toils sweat under the judgment of the sky, pride arcs on their nose,s and skin leathered in the sun. 

Their lips were orange – red from their ceremonious betel nut chewing – spitting out worries and unknowingly swallowing some dregs of guilt. It warms the body and energizes strength that even at midday, they drink gin to fuel their pursuit, they roll tobacco smoke from a book’s torn page – if they remember to smile, it was because of the conclusion of a good story.

We bring them home, trees fashioned to build our houses and be part of our daily life. They are designed to store our memories and to remain functional as engineered parts. I enter the door, entering a tree – open the windows and extend the seeming branches to reach for the birds in the sky.

At night, I listened for any signs of life, and there was breathing. I can only hope for many safer years to come – under this house, living, cooking, sleeping, and when the time comes to pursue another storm carrying the strength of what ancient seas it comes from, I pray to be spared from the fall.#nordis.net