Apartment Lot, Day 9

Sunday, November 8, 2009, 3:14pm

The maple tree that once shadowed the parking lot has become a skeleton.  Only a few yellow leaves hang from the lower branches, the rest long dead on the ground from the cold, the crush of footfalls, and rain.  It's as though it's hanging onto its last handful of comfort before it goes into a long sleep, its new buds waiting until March rolls around to break from their casings, green and resilient.

I don't imagine the maple feels much.  If it truly is a skeleton--as it appears with its long, spindly arms and fingers, knobby knuckles, wrists and elbows--then it has no nerve endings, its limbs only wood, like bone, unfeeling, even when broken. 

But wait a minute--when humans and other animals break bones, they feel pain.  Broken bones hurt because the hard white covering of the bone (the periosteum) is filled with nerves and blood vessels, which trigger a pain response when damaged.  But trees, clearly, have no central nervous system--therefore, they cannot feel pain.  But when trees are damaged, they heal.  They are made of cells like the rest of us, and can regenerate even better than we can--sometimes entire limbs, or entire bodies from their root systems.  If they couldn't, we'd be at a loss for replanting--the saplings we plant are severed arms and fingers, which grow into huge, lumbering bodies, which cover themselves in finery each spring, flaunting their livelihood with shades of green draped from their shoulders and filling their palms.  Their garments are utilitarian--the leaves providing cooling shade and breathable air, aside from what we call beautiful: their fibrous fabric, saturated hues, buds and blooms.  Even when they shed their garb and become the winter skeleton, lithe and frail-looking, they are no less strong--still much stronger, in many ways, than ourselves.

Maybe we mimic the maple, without knowing it.  Maybe our garments are beautiful and useful because we have learned from nature that they can be.  Maybe our bones are healing because plants began the trend, because we learned to evolve based on what we saw.  We are far more complicated, with our digestive system and nervous system, our blood and pain responses and speaking voices.  We shout not only when we are in pain, but when we are protesting, the way we know plants can't when we hack them down, slice through the simple wooden bodies of pines and elms and maples: no pain, no protest.

But are they stronger for being unfeeling, unspeaking?  Stronger for not fighting back, not needing to--knowing in their bones that they can return anywhere, anytime, that their roots and seeds (and even severed limbs, with a little human care) can regenerate what they once were--the way humans hope for reincarnation, an afterlife, a place to thrive.  We are cursed with worry, with feeling, with thought.  They are simply breathing, living, evolving through seasons, returning before ever fully extinguishing.

The last handful of yellow maple leaves is vulnerable.  They are dying, and one heavy gust of wind will take them to the ground with the others, leaving the maple naked to the elements while I stand by and watch in my heavy coat and layers of cotton and synthetic fabric.  I shiver.  I could die out here. 

The tree is only waiting.