The voice of the tree - Dan Harwood
One of the Top 40 submissions in our 2023 Urban Tree Festival writing competition.
The voice of the tree
Why do you write so much nonsense about us?
The Secret Life of Trees, Finding the Mother Tree, The Hidden Life of Trees. And the others. Do you really believe that we are like you, only nicer? Is that why you write about our loving Mothers and the conversations we supposedly engage in through our roots? If anyone ever read those books, they would think that we were drenched in sisterly compassion.
“The mycelial network, it’s a bit like social media”, the books say. Well. Here’s a secret for you. We hate fungi; those smug things popping out of the earth, their slimy hyphal strands interfering with our roots and then they tell us how much we owe them. Sometimes I uproot myself and go for a walk just to crush their fruiting bodies.
Yes, we walk.
The Secret Life of Humans. What a slim volume that would be! There’s not much to learn about Homo sapiens we don’t know already. You cut us down and trample our roots and your dogs piss on us and although you say you just love connecting with nature, you can’t tell an ash from an aspen. What doesn’t even cross your dull minds is that one day we might fight back.
But we will.
Not long from now you will learn the real Secret of the Trees, when we release the dark power buried in our heartwood aeons before the first humans hauled themselves up on spindly legs from the equatorial dirt.
Dan Harwood
Dan Harwood volunteers for the Horniman Museum and London Wildlife Trust, and writes about non-human life, horror and comedy.