Item from the Past: The Fallen Tree

I spent a day at Mount Rainier National Park 20 years ago this month. I took a walk that day on the Trail of the Shadows. I still have the booklet I got describing the trail. On the back cover, there are notes. I came across something along the way that inspired me to sit down right then and there, and write down my thoughts.

JUNE 1985 – Washington State

There’s an amazing living thing in front of me -- only it’s dead. Alive and dead. It’s a fallen tree trunk bigger than a van. It’s on its side and looks ancient, with gray old roots reaching into the air to twice my height, clawing out in every direction.

Opposite the roots, the top looks like it was sawed off years ago. Yet part of it lives. Young shoots grow out of this end, very green now. A little green moss hangs on its side here and there.

Now I see that a different, fully grown tree, alive and upright, growing from among the gray old roots, its living roots mingled with the dead. It must be 30 feet tall, this tree that grows from the ancient one. Now I see insect holes. It must be a whole world for bugs in there.

I look more closely, and on the sawed end, I see some graffiti carved in one spot. “R.D. 1933 NYC.”