Perpetual Soliloquy

What will it be like to listen to trees?

Weak weather, an overcast day. Your daughter asked you to come do this. Five years estranged, and then, out of the blue, she rings you up and asks you to march into this forest. Her work, she says over the din of the city, is stressful. A dizzle dazzle, she says. But she doesn’t want to explain what she means. She wants you to come here and do this, and then she will see you again. She’ll buy you lunch. So you are here.

The walk from the trailhead is long. Grackles are rummaging through the grass. A chipmunk dives into a burrow. What seemed like clouds or fog on the drive here may, in fact, be smoke. 

You pick up your device from a small booth at the mouth of a large clearing. In the middle of the clearing are five trees, aspens, burning yellow leaves. A boy, thirteen or fourteen, thereabouts, loiters on the other side. Nobody else is here.

The device connects to your audio and emits one tone to let you know that it is functioning. Then it goes quiet. There are no labels on it, no information to explain what it means or how it ought to be interpreted. Some people say the device is the work of arborists, others say artists, others say priests. Your daughter didn’t tell you which camp she belongs to. She just said to come.  

You walk up to the first aspen. Nothing happens. The second aspen. Nothing still. Or maybe: a susurrus like white noise, almost like breathing, like snoring. And then, from the west, the wind draws out a tendril of smoke and it touches the aspen, and you hear: No. It’s softly spoken, not a shriek, not a whimper. There’s no suggestion of fear. It’s a remark, a fact. 

Another touch of smoke. No. The other aspens are participating too. And then the sun emerges and touches the smoke and the smoke gleams like a sword. Then the wind comes, then the smoke is gone, then there is only sun.

The light grazes the yellow skin of the leaves. Yes. Like a single C, plucked from a harp. Whose voice is this? It is not quite the voice of a person, even as it is close, too close, to the voice of your grandmother. More sunlight. The last of the clouds have evaporated. Yes. 

From the other side of the clearing, the teenage boy approaches. He looks like he has had his slingshot confiscated. You grin at him. You are fond of him right away. 

He takes a sharp rock from his pocket and drags it along the trunk of an aspen. No. You laugh, and he laughs back. He attacks the next, and the next. He’s laughing harder. By the time he reaches the tree you’re standing beside, all five of the aspens are saying No. You look at the boy’s face and remember your own wickedness and you slap him. He runs off. The trees are quiet. A wind, a minute rustling, comes next. You wait to hear more, yet there is no more.

It’s late in the day, dappled light. You hang your device up in the booth. Back down the trail, back to your car. What were you expecting? More than this, to be sure. If this is science, it’s unimpressive. If this is art, it’s meaningless. Your daughter must be in a sad place to think that Yes and No can sum to anything. 

But then, what would your life have been if somebody had listened when you said No?