A few of the native Texas trees do change colors, but I began to notice it earlier than usual this year. Then I realized something else was happening: trees are dying all across the south due to the brutal drought we’ve experienced for the last six months.
Our mayor has asked for close to a million dollars to begin removing the trees, to help avoid forest fires. The city’s manager of trees, Victor Cordoba, says "They work all day. They sit outside all day. Then they turn to get some water and there’s none — for months, so they go into stress and eventually they die off..."
All over town, thousands of trees are brown and lifeless, interspersed with green trees and semi-dead ones struggling to stay alive. What I don’t understand is how one tree can be full of life, and right next to it, an identical tree is completely dead. Why does one tree survive, and its twin die? Does the stronger tree grab the water and nutrients from the other? Is it survival of the fittest? What about the ones that are halfway gone – is there any chance we can save them?
It’s an allegory for life. Physically we're all basically the same – arms, legs, head, torso – and we have roughly the same subsistence – food, water, shelter. But deep down in our root system, we’re very different. Some people are under stress we may never see or understand. Some people don’t have access to the same life-sustaining basic elements. Others have simply taken such a beating there is nothing left to hold onto.
We're a lot like these trees, aren't we? Working all day, existing the best way we know how in a drought that has lasted far longer than we expected. A hurricane will do the same thing, but much faster. Once the dead trees are gone, what will be left? Where do you turn for water?
I like to think of a quote my character M'Lynn said in the last play I performed, "Steel Magnolias" : That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
No comments:
Post a Comment