Roots of Time

I was young then, small and slender. I grew next to a small town in a wide park. Back in those days it was very peaceful. I used to watch the kids play in the grass nearby. One small kid, Marcus, used to try and climb my slim branches that could barely hold his weight. Every time his mother brought him to the park to play he would run to me like I was his favourite friend. She would often grip his little body and pull him away from me if he got too high, his little arms clinging to me for as long as he could while his shrill wails felt like they vibrated my leaves.

As I grew, he grew too. My branches thickened and strengthened so that I no longer strained under his weight. He liked to climb up to my highest branches and hide in my leaves while he watched and spied on the passes-by down below. His mother no longer gripped him and pulled; her voice came from further away, calling out his name until he reluctantly climbed back down me and ran to meet her.

But as he got older I started to see him less. He was almost a man now, and instead of climbing me, I only saw him from a distance, hanging with friends, walking by on the street, until eventually I didn’t see him at all.

As he had grown, the town had grown. It grew larger and our park grew smaller. I had seen the destruction of some of my friends that had grown closer to the buildings, closer to the roads, until they were too close, in the way; there was no more room.

But there were still trees around and grass to lie on.

As time went by the small park was filled with benches and swings and monkey bars. I loved the daytime when the kids played all about, skipping over my roots, laughing, talking, shouting, the people loud and active. Sometimes I feared the night with those that came to smoke or worse on the benches and slides where the laughing families had earlier sat with the sun. One night, however, I will cherish forever.

I had often seen him walking his dog. His skin darker than my bark, and his smile wide and honest. And then I started to see her; shy, red headed, caring. It was on one moonlit night that I heard them talking softly, walking together towards me. The park was almost empty, save for a few people walking through it as a short cut to home. I had expected them. The man, Noah, had left something in a nook in my trunk earlier that day, I knew he would come back to retrieve it. The moon glinted off his teeth and made her hair almost sparkle. He laid a rug out at my roots. He asked her a question, and with a tear on her cheek that caught the moonlight she said yes, and he reached up to claim back the little box he had left me in protection of.

I was still growing, my leaves stretching to the sun, my trunk wider than any person. As the town continued to grow around me my park continued to grow smaller and my friends became fewer and fewer until I was the tallest tree around.

People didn’t stop like they used to. They just walked passed in their hurry, occasionally a runner would sit for a drink break on a bench nearby me, sometimes an exhausted mother would sit as she caught her breath before starting off again.

It was not long though before I was the only tree.

On the other side of town big machines had started to come. They were digging up a lot of the earth. I was so tall by now that I could see over the buildings in front of me. They dug and dug, deep into the earth until I could feel the very ground groan with the pain of it. The town started to change. People didn’t stick around for very long anymore. It seemed to me that every other day I would spot someone new, sometimes never seeing them again. More shops were built in front of me, more houses were built behind me and more machines came day after day, digging into the earth.

The houses, the buildings, the roads, ever encroached on my dwindling park. There was no more room for the swings and slides, there was no more room for the benches and picnic tables. Soon there was no more room for the grass for people to lie on. All that was left was the small patch of earth around my roots. People passing would sometimes look at me, occasionally I would receive a smile, but nobody stopped by me now; cars streamed pass me on either side, I could feel the vibrations of their tyres rattle through my roots.

I thought I would stay here forever, until my leaves withered and died. But I was wrong.

My roots still grew, they stretched and arched. The people didn’t like that; they had to keep repairing their roads. One day someone came, a bossy looking man. He took out something from a bag. It was a small metal can. He lifted the can up towards me and I heard the whooshing sound gush out of it and something cold hit my bark. He had marked me. Marked me with a red cross.

I had not known what it meant, but I could feel it there, almost like a dull throb as it leaked through my bark into my sap. It made me feel a bit sick. I had hoped he wouldn’t come back with more spray.

He didn’t come back. They left me with the paint there for a week or more. Then they came. They came with ropes, with chainsaws, with a large machine that smelled like woodchip.

I didn’t know what was happening. To start with, I was excited. Finally, with his ropes and harness, a man was climbing me. Someone finally was climbing me again. But then my excitement turned to horror. I remember pain, pain in my upper limbs as their weight suddenly vanished from me. Then I was no longer tall enough to see over the buildings.

The last thing in my existence that I saw was the men, in their helmets; nameless, faceless.

They could have been anyone.