Methuselah

Snow swirls in front of the windshield of her small plane; white is all she can see. The plane is bouncing like a wild bronco. The altimeter is spinning around so much it’s difficult to read. She glances at the oil temperature, it’s rising. Something isn’t right; the craft is taking too much of a beating. When she had left earlier they said she’d have clear skies, but once she climbed to fly over the Mountain peaks it all changed. How can it be snowing in July?

She kept telling herself to be calm and remember her training, but it was hard to do. Her brains were being scrambled by the chaotic motion of the plane. She decides to return to the airstrip, watching the turn coordinator; she aligns the wing tips with the markings and starts her 180 degree turn. Suddenly her engines seize up. She grabs the radio;

“Mayday! Mayday!” she cries but, she only receives static.

The plane immediately feels like it has slowed down. The vertical indictor shows the plane descending; she is lifted from her seat by the downward momentum. She struggles to turn on the transponder to 7700, so they’ll know she’s going down!   

As she gets closer to the ground, she sees a small valley and tries to maneuver the plane in that direction, but it was in a free fall, tumbling to earth. Sending up a prayer to God, she curls herself into a ball and braces for impact!

The silence is so unnerving it feels like she has been falling for hours instead of seconds, when the plane finally crashes into the packed snow she feels like a wrecking ball has just crushed every bone in her body. She tumbles through the air, being tossed like a rag doll only to impact with the ground a second time. Her lungs deflate with the second impact and refuse to allow any air into them, a strange ringing assaults her ears and blackness envelopes her.

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Icy wind stabbing at her face awakens her; she struggles to open her eyes. Everything is white with swirling snow, disoriented she doesn’t know where she’s at. Gradually her memories return and she becomes aware of the crash. She is still in her seat, but her seat is not part of the plane any more. The nose of the plane is about 15 feet in front of her partially buried in a snow drift and she has no idea where the tail end is. Tentatively she unbuckles her seat belt. The pain to do that simple task is excruciating but, she knows she can’t stay here, she had left on a warm sunny day wearing only a t-shirt and jeans and now if she doesn’t find shelter, she could die from exposure before anyone came looking for her. 

She pushes herself up and grabs the back of the seat to steady herself as she sways back and forth. The landscape is eerily barren, she sees several skeletal looking trees poking through snow drifts as if reaching out to God.

Most are jagged, barren trunks looking more dead than alive. Some have pine needles sparsely sprinkled through out.

She sees one large tree in the distance, it is massive compared to the others. It's base divided into multiple standing trunks, half look as jagged and skeletal as the trees around them, but the other half of the tree is covered in pine needles and it’s branches hang to the ground. She salvages what she can from the plane and stumbles the 100 yards to the tree, as she goes she scrapes together pine needles from other pitiful trees that poke thru the drifts.

At the massive tree, she spreads the branches so she can make a place to sit. She spreads her gathered pine needles on the ground next to the trunk for insulation, and then she lays a survival blanket on top of them. She ties a red bandana to one of the skeletal trunks, then crawls into the space she created and pulls the branches back together. She looks around her make shift shelter and crumbles unto the blanket. She’s exhausted, in pain, and freezing, in the middle of summer, figures with her luck. It’s difficult for her to breathe, whether from injury or altitude she doesn’t know but soon she is unconscious again.

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Consciousness comes in degrees; she hears a low rumble of a deep unfamiliar voice. It soothes her, her body rocks gently with the swaying of the wind and she is cocooned in warmth. She opens her eyes to shadows of green. Sunlight peaks through here and there but mostly dimness greets her. 

“Hello, Fragile person.” The voice softly rumbles.

She slowly sits up and surveys her surroundings. She is in a cozy burrow, its walls and floor are made of entwined branches, the bed she is on, consists of thick branches covered in pine needles.   The pine needles cover the walls too, a gust of wind parts the thin branches like the opening of a window. She crawls forward to peer out the opening. It’s no longer snowing, but the wind is strong, whipping at her face. She leans back into her cozy burrow.  She can still see pieces of the wreckage, it is strewn across the barren rocky landscape and the wind is dusting it with the fallen snow. It’s then she realizes that she’s looking down from above, she’s up in the massive tree; about 25 feet off the ground. The burrow reminds her of a tree house made by nature, without the interference of human hands. 

“Hello” the voice rumbles again.

She jerks in a circle looking for the owner of the voice. She sees no one.

“It is considered rude to not speak when spoken too.” The voice complains.

“Hello?” she timidly utters. “Where are you? And who are you?”

“I am Methuselah, and I am all around you.”

“What do you mean all around me? Come out so I can see you!”

“Are you without sight that you cannot see what is around you?”

“Stop playing games! I can’t see you when you’re hiding!”

“Methuselah does not play games or hide!” he rumbles indignantly “You sit on my branches, in the burrow I’ve made for you and utter falsehoods to me! I should dump you back into the snow to fend for yourself!”

The tree shakes ferociously, and the wind cuts through gaps in the branches,

“No, please I’m sorry, let me stay here.” She cries out.

After a few moments the voice replies, “Methuselah will let you stay, what is your name?”

“My name is Ann, will you come out so I can see whom I’m talking too.”

“How do you not see Methuselah? My branches cocoon you from the weather, you are kept warm by my needles. Methuselah is here!,”

Ann didn’t know what to say or think it must be injuries from the plane crash. Her subconscious talking to her. Right now she was so frightened she decides to play along, talking to herself might sound crazy but it will keep her from worrying about it situation. So, some company was better than no company even if it is her subconscious masquerading as a tree.

“Of course I see you I’m sorry, I hit my head during the crash.”

“Yes, you were lucky to survive, persons are so fragile.”

“So you’re a tree?”

“Methuselah is a Bristlecone pine; I am the oldest living thing on this earth. There was one older full of wisdom but, he was killed.”

“How old are you?” she asked refusing to discuss death even if it was only a trees.

“Methuselah is 4995 years old; I was deposited here on this mountain during the Great Flood of our God’s sorrow.”

“What! The flood of the bible, Noah’s ark, that flood?”

“Yes, that is the only world flood that has been.”

“Wow,” Ann thought, I really hit my head hard to be having a conversation about God with a tree. “How do you know about God?”

“How could Methuselah NOT know of God? Did he not create the world? Did he not make the mountains and the seas? The oceans and the deserts? Did he not make each blade of grass and every grain of sand? I know of God the creator and I know of his love for persons!”

“You sound bitter?”

“Methuselah is not bitter, just sad. God created his children, to love and to be loved but you do not deserve his love! Methuselah has lived many a millennia and Methuselah as seen the evil and destruction persons have brought down on earth. God made persons a paradise and what did persons do? Brought sin upon the world, sin and death. Not for Methuselah, no I’ve lived millennia’s and I’m still strong and growing but persons they do not live on earth a millennia, they only live a tiny fragment of that. They come like leaves dropped in fall and disappear as footsteps in the snow. Once the world was all a garden but, now death creeps over the land. Look at Methuselah’s home once lush and beautiful, now naked and barren, even though I look gnarled and atrophied on the outside God has made me strong and resilient. Methuselah thrives on very little, my life line is only a 10” wide strip of tissue covered in bark, yet it carries all the essential nutrients I need from my roots to my needles.” 

Wow, her subconscious is egotistical and judgemental. “You said you are 4995 years old, is that an exact date or just a guess?”

“Methuselah does not guess, my rings record my age, they are inside of me, recording time, marking history.”

“Marking history, How?”

“History marks Methuselah, it is part of me. In the year 1628, my rings marked a terrible cataclysmic event. The skies were darkened, the sun didn’t shine, temperatures plummeted so low that the water in some of my cells froze, it then expanded and ruptured. The taste of brimstone clung to the air. A scar was left in my rings from the volcanic explosion on Santorini, the repercussions affected many continents.

Ann tried to remember if she’d ever known that fact, how else could her subconscious bring it up. Silently she wrestled with her mind, this is not real, it can’t be! The tree house (as she thought of it) swayed with a violet gust of wind.

“Shortly after the time of darkened sky, God chose to walk the Earth. I had finally matured from a seedling and…….”

“Wait a minute! You said God walked the earth?”

“Yes, Methuselah did just tell you that, persons called him Jesus, but he was God too.”

“I know the story of Jesus; he was the son of God.”

“Yes, he is the son but, he is also God, so is his Holy Spirit. The Three are One!”

“How? I’m so confused.”

“Even Methuselah does not know the how, but I know it is so. When you meet God you can ask him of the how?” Methuselah chuckled shaking his branches, then he sighed, “When person’s killed God Jesus on the cross Methuselah wept with the whole of creation, sorrow filled the universe. And oh how Methuselah rejoiced when he arose again 3 days later.”

“But that happened on the other side of the world, how could you of known?” 

“God’s creation have our roots in the earth, we know what is happening in the world, unlike persons who do not even realize what they do to the earth from where they stand.”

“You don’t seem to like people much, so why are you helping me?” Silence greets her question. The wind rocks her little tree house as she waits, just when she’s about to nod off, the voice speaks again.

“Methuselah does not dislike all persons, about 1300 years ago, persons you call Piutes would come to my mountain top during the warmer season. They would camp among we Bristlecones and the children would climb my trunks and play in my branches. I remember fondly. Until in the year 1860 more persons came, spurred by greed for the silver metals in the earth.   They stripped the hills bare trashing and destroying my mountain top. Explosions rocked my foundations, smoke and soot filled the air. My brothers and I tried to fight, releasing evil smelling chemicals when they broke our skin. To no avail, Though strong against attacking insects it had no effects on persons. But the evil chemicals and toxins produced by the fire pits of the persons have added to the scars in my rings; you can even find encapsulated bits of silver embedded within my trunks. I have watched civilizations rise and fall. I have lived through your Bronze Age, Iron Age, Machine Age. I even lived through your Nuclear Age, when persons detonated the Atom Bomb not to far from here. My rings retain the scars from that too. But Methuselah still has hope for persons, because God has hope for persons and he is NEVER wrong.

“How could you have hope with everything you’ve seen?” She asks as a tear slips from here eye.

“Methuselah has hope because of the few. The persons who care. Methuselah met such a person in the year 1957, he was a scientist. Methuselah didn’t speak with him only watched. He came here to try to find answers about history, he drilled a section out of my core, it wasn’t pleasant but, Methuselah endured. His name was Edmond Schulman; he read my rings like a book, baring the history of the world for those who wanted to learn. Unlike words, my rings do not lie. He named me Methuselah and shared his findings with others, this brought 100’s to 1000’s of persons to my mountain. Each wanting a piece of the oldest living thing on the planet. They trampled the mountain, breaking off branches and twigs from myself and others around, this is the only time I feared death. But Edmund got one thing wrong, I wasn’t the oldest then, there was one twice my age, Ancient was its name. 

One person came with the others, he was a scientist also searching for answers; he came for a piece of my core but came upon Ancient instead. He was inept with the tools he brought and couldn’t retrieve the sample, so out of frustration he retrieved a chain saw and cut Ancient down. We shrieked and screamed in silence, no one heard. The scientist, Curry was his name, cut a swath off the fallen trunk of Ancient, only a piece about the size of a medium limb, then left. He destroyed Ancient for just a small section. Only later did he realize the extent of his crime, when counting the rings he discovered that he had killed the oldest living thing on earth.

“That is so sad; I don’t understand why you would help me.”

“Methuselah tells you to share with persons, learn from history, open your eyes to what God has given you. Teach others to love God and appreciate what you have through him, not to just see the moment and the temporary pleasures.”

“I’m only one person, Methuselah.”

“A pinecone is only one also, but it contains two seeds, which grow into two trees which produce more pine cones, go and share your seeds.”

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Ann wakes in a hospital with a nurse leaning over her checking her vitals.

“Methuselah?” Ann groggily asks.

“Heavens no dear, I’m old but not that old.” She laughs. My name is Helen, you are extremely fortunate to be alive.”

“How did I get here! I was just with Methuselah!”

“Calm down, you are safe now, you’ve been through a terrible ordeal but, by the grace of God your alive and well, you’re actually a miracle. You only have a few scratches and bruises from the crash, and you weren’t effected by the cold even though it took hours for you to be found. They said if it wasn’t for you climbing under that tree, you could have died. And tying that red bandana to the tree was a very smart move.”

“The tree?”

“Yes dear, you were clutching this when they found you; we had a heck of a time getting you to release it.”

Ann takes the object from the nurse; she smiles and clutches the pinecone to her chest and makes a promise. I will always remember and share my seeds.

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Do you ever wonder what God’s wonderful creation would say to mankind if they could speak?

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