Decomposition in Progress
Field Notes from a White Oak
The white oak tree beside the watershed is dying.
Its bark is separating from the sapwood in vertical strips.
The cambium layer has ceased to function.
Water is no longer traveling from roots to crown.
*
The leaves fell three weeks earlier than neighboring trees.
They are brown, not the yellow or red produced by color-changing chemicals.
They are dry. They contain no green pigment.
The stems detached without the corky layer that forms in healthy leaf drop.
*
Fungi are present on the trunk's north side.
They are bracket fungi, shelf-like mushrooms.
Their fruiting bodies are orange and yellow, overlapping.
They are decomposing the wood fibers inside the trunk.
*
Bark beetles have made galleries under the bark.
The galleries are serpentine, branching from a central channel.
Each groove is two millimeters wide.
The larvae ate the inner bark as they moved outward from where eggs were laid.
*
The tree's root system extends approximately fifteen meters from the trunk.
The fine feeder roots, less than two millimeters in diameter, are dying first.
They are desiccating. They are brittle when touched.
The fungal networks that connected them to surrounding trees are breaking down.
*
Woodpeckers are arriving daily.
They are pileated woodpeckers, the large kind with red crests.
They drill rectangular holes to access beetle larvae.
Wood chips accumulate at the tree's base, pale and fresh.
*
The tree is not fighting. The tree is not surrendering.
The tree is undergoing cellular breakdown.
Chemical processes are stopping. Structural integrity is failing.
This is what occurs when vessels no longer conduct water upward.
*
In six months, more branches will fall.
In two years, the trunk will likely split.
In five years, the trunk will be mostly hollow.
In ten years, what remains will be unrecognizable as a tree.
*
The oak is not a symbol of endurance.
The oak is not a lesson about time.
The oak is a specific organism, a white oak,
experiencing mortality at a specific location,
measured in wood density, moisture content, and fungal spread.
*
This is decomposition.
This is what happens to trees.
About the Creator
Tim Carmichael
Tim is an Appalachian poet and cookbook author. He writes about rural life, family, and the places he grew up around. His poetry and essays have appeared in Beautiful and Brutal Things, his latest book.
Keep reading
More stories from Tim Carmichael and writers in Poets and other communities.
This Land
Companion Preface This work appears in four movements, not as revisions of one another, but as different ways of standing on the same ground. The first speaks with grit. The second listens for what still opens. The third braids what was once held apart. The fourth offers a vow—small, human, unfinished. Together, they trace a walk rather than an argument. What changes between them is not the land, but the stance of the one walking it. You may enter at any point. You may linger where something recognizes you. Nothing here asks for agreement— only presence. — Flower InBloom
By Flower InBloom3 days ago in Poets
Field of the Fallen
Sunlight danced softly across the frost-crusted fields, making the little blades of grass sparkle like emeralds. The faraway chirrup of a songbird was the only disruption to the quiet of the morning. An icy chill, the last vestige of the dying winter, clung to the air, settling in a thick white mist at the far side of the open field. The heavy stench of decay hung in that mist, punctuation by the sharp tang of freshly spilled blood.
By A. J. Schoenfeld7 days ago in Fiction
Comments (1)
There's something special about the process, it makes you appreciate life for what it is.