|
THE FOREST OF THE SILENT
A month after a forest fire I walk through the charred remains, nothing left unburned, nothing visibly alive. All the vegetation is thoroughly blackened. All the animals have left for more hospitable ground. There is no wind and there are no leaves to rustle if there were. There is no movement. There is no color save for charcoal black and the deep gray of the sky. There is just an eerie but meditative silence.
Out of the stillness, large fat snowflakes begin to fall. Only a few at first, but it slowly builds into a heavy, urgent effort to blanket the forest. It is still calm except for a barely detectable movement of air from the south that lays the falling snow gently up against the south side of the charred trees. Then as silently as it began the snowfall stops, leaving the trees striped a fresh brilliant white, like a healing salve applied too late. Yet there is the feeling that the snow is gently nurturing the burned forest.
At what point does a burned forest begin to heal, to renew? It starts immediately of course, but I think in this forest this first snow marks its symbolic rebirth.
|