The Quiet Crash

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

A better question might be if a tree falls in a forest could anyone hear it if they tried?  I’d never seen or heard a tree fall naturally before I moved to Costa Rica.  I’d seen a few taken down, a noisy affair with men, ropes and chainsaws and finally a cracking boom as the tree loses it’s ability to stand and falls groaning to the ground.

About a year ago a tree feel at our hotel.  It was windy and raining and we were busy sweeping water out of the restaurant when it went. We didn't hear it over the rain and the wind, we saw it. Tipping slowly, time standing still as it feel down, down, away from us, too quickly to be scared it fell into the empty courtyard filling the whole thing. It was a big tree, maybe 50 feet tall big enough to have killed at least me and my employee if it had decided to fall in the direction of the wind, but it didn't fall in the direction of the wind, it fell gracefully, sideways in to the courtyard filling the entire courtyard with trunk and branches, bending the frames that hold our laundry lines, breaking off the banana palms, falling the only way it could to cause no serious damage, to cause no real harm at all.

Trees fall in Costa Rica. I'd been told that and seen it often enough on the roads.  The soil's goodness is only in the top layer in the tropics so the towering lush giants have a shallow root system. Even wet soil can make them fall.  I was just lucky I hadn't been under this one when it fell.

I was in the shower a couple months ago when I heard the sound, on a clear night almost windless I heard it.  Like the wind sighing, the tree heaved out it’s last breath and fell softly in the corner of my yard.  We found it the next day on it’s side, a broken bird nest in its branches, green leaves still looking for the sun. It took me while to get someone in to cut it up, it wasn't hurting anyone just lying there, slowly losing the green, slowly dying because of it’s lack of connection to the soil.

The last tree that fell was one of my mango trees. I love my mango trees, all 15 of them, 60 or 70 years old they tower over my yard filled with fruit and animals.  And then one just let go.  Just exhaled it’s way to the ground, a 70 foot tree fell without anyone noticing, without anyone hearing it’s death grasp, it’s final sigh.  And there it lies on it’s side in my yard.

Squirrels still run through it’s branches, some of it’s roots are still in the ground and most of it’s leaves are still green. I wonder if it will still flower, still try to fruit with only a tentative grasp to the earth and water it needs. In some ways the garden looks better for the lack of the tree.  The sun shines through now and the grass is growing green and thick.  The tree sideways leaning on other plants still looks alive despite it’s roots in the air and I wonder how long it will live like this.

I think perhaps the US economy, the US we know, the powerhouse of production, the Empire of Idealists is like that tree.  Perhaps it has already fallen.  We may not have heard it fall but it doesn't mean it is still standing.  Maybe we are just like the squirrels scurrying around anxious with a sense that everything is not quite right.  Maybe the next generation will not know the tree was ever standing, they will be born believing the ground should be that close, not knowing of the former glory of their tree.  Perhaps I am already that squirrel of the second generation.  I am filled with a sense of foreboding about the welfare of my world, it seems like we used to be closer to heaven than we are right now, but I’m not sure.  After all the leaves on my tree are still green, maybe there are less leaves than there were, maybe the whole tree has been uprooted and maybe there will be no fruit this season and we will all have to scurry even more to make ends meet.  Or maybe everything is fine, maybe everything is as it has always been and I am neglecting to look up to see that leafless sky above me is blue.