There is a forest where you can find stories written in the stumps of trees.

 

Everyone knows if you cut down a tree and count the rings you can find out the age of the tree. In this forest you get more than a year.  You can get a whole story written in between the rings of a tree. Perhaps it is the squishy  crumbling soil that blankets the forest floor. Or maybe there is something in the rain. Something sweet tasting and cool that feeds the soil that feeds the trees. Or maybe it is the people buried deep, deep in the ground where the roots of these trees tangle between rib cages and burrow into skulls. Maybe that’s where the stories come from: from the skulls to the roots to the trees.

 

The forest is shrouded in fog and protected by mist. Fog is disorienting; it can turn a person in circles and makes shadows into menacing monsters. But in the end fog is just vapour, and not even poisonous vapor. It is just water. To escape fog you only have to keep walking or wait for the sun to rise and burn it all away.

 

Here is the question: Would you cut down a living tree to get to the story inside? If it was the best story you would ever hear your life, an epic that would stir your blood, a drama that would settle in your bones– If it was a story about about you– If it answered that question, that one question that like a weed has been growing in your lungs–

 

If the answer to that question was written in the rings of a tree would you grab an axe? Would you heave, sweat rolling down your back, your arms, and into your eyes? Would you flinch as the tree crashed against the forest floor? Would you cover your ears in guilt and shame because if you don’t hear the tree fall then maybe you never really cut it down?

 

The stories written between the rings of trees run in circles. If you ever cut down a tree with a story inside you should know to start from the edge and work your way in, counterclockwise.

 

Who is to say what would be more beautiful: A graveyard with prose scribbled on the stumps. An undead library, or the living, towering woods with secrets hidden in every tree. Who is to say which is more life giving: the trees and their air, or the stories and their love. We are being strangled of both. We are gasping for either.

 

Here is a story from one of these stumps:

 

One day a woodsman came into these woods (are you surprised it was a man?) He had heard of the truth found in between the rings from birds, or from the stars. Gossips the lot of them. So he picked a tree. The biggest tree (he was a man remember?)  and he heaved his axe. Sweat rolled down his back, his arms, and into his eyes.

 

He killed that tree. He revealed this story to the air.

  

Can you imagine his rage? His anger when he found out the words written in between the rings of the tree were written in a language he couldn’t read?  He tried to burn it down. Turn the whole forest to ash. No more life giving trees or prose just choking, smoking ash. And he did. For awhile all that remained was the charred remains of forest stories. And then after many rain falls and many sun rises, eventually saplings started to grow.

 

You start from the edge of a ring when you read the story in a tree. That means that the words in the first ring, the very center, the ring that means “year one” are the last words. The tree tells the story in reverse as it grows. It starts from the ending and every year adds a new ring towards the beginning. The saplings in this new wood are growing and moving every year ever closer to the beginning of their stories.

 

There is a forest where you can find stories written in the stumps of trees.