That’s the way stories are written. That’s the way nature works. That’s life.
Everything in existence has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Why do we fight it so much? Of course we want things to last. But sometimes we need to let go of things and let them fade into their natural destiny. As humans, we seem bent on forcing nature to our will. We despise change. Particularly change that removes things from existence. Yet that really is the way of nature.
All organisms have relatively set lifespans. Rivers change their paths. Glaciers push forward and recede. The wind erodes the mountains. Disease wipes out populations. Climate change does the same….even without our assistance. Trees grow, they proliferate, then they eventually die. Some trees only live a few years, some can live for centuries, and a select few seem to defy the natural order of things and survive for a millennia.
The mountains crumble into beaches and eventually dissolve back into raw minerals that provide the building blocks for new objects. Water eventually dissipates as vapour to be recycled into the atmosphere and be reborn. And plants and animals die so that nutrients can be recycled into the next generation of living material.
It’s natural.
So why is the Vancouver Park Board so bent on saving the remnants of a once proud tree. They call it the “Hollow Tree” but it hasn’t been a tree for many decades. It is a stump.. Plain and simple. A sad reminder of the damage tat man does to the environment around us. We take the majestic and shape it to fit our needs. And then we leave sad reminders and herald them as natural treasures.
Once it was a proud and massive tree. Then we cut it down, but humans wouldn’t let it “die”. Instead, the plan now is to turn it into some “Frankenstein” tree that will be preserved for posterity. Really, it’s time to let it go Vancouver……it’s just a stump….a once proud red cedar deserves the right to reach the end.