Epilogue: Tree Politics

Lights come up on Girl, naked, her body scratched, brown from sun and forest dirt.  She is lying on a broad stump.  It is the remains of her mentor, Old Laurel. The trees around her are projections of green, orange and gold, shifting and growing. Their speech is music, a chorus of voices and chimes, rising from the earth and blowing like pollen in air

Trees: Get up. Move. You can move.

Girl (like a corpse): No. I can’t. I don’t want to.  I’m too sad.

Trees: M-o-o-o-o-o-v-e. You are a person. You can move.

Girl:  I was supposed to become a tree. A tree like Old Laurel.

Trees: A person can’t become a tree.

Girl: Not now. He was the only one who would teach me.  Now he’s dead and I’ll never become a tree.

Trees: What is dead?

Girl (rises up on one elbow): Dead. You know what dead is.  Not with us anymore. Gone.

Trees: He is not gone. He is with us.

Girl (angry, sitting all the way up): No, look. (Runs her hands over Old Laurel). Gone. I put all my faith in him, and now he’s gone.  He’s gone forever.   

Trees: He’s here.

Girl: Where?

Trees: Below you.  Look down.

Girl (turns her head downward, trying to look through Old Laurel, through the dirt): I can’t.

Trees: He’s there.  He runs deep in the earth.

Girl (collapses again, lies hopeless and still): His roots. But they chopped down his body.  They took it away somewhere.

Trees: There is no body.

Girl (silent for a moment, sighs, stares into the leaves and branches above her). You don’t understand. Old Laurel was my teacher. He was the one who gave me hope.

Trees: He still gives you hope.

Girl (lies on her back, staring upwards): No. He’s gone and I don’t have any hope.

Trees: You can feel him.  You can feel him on your skin.

Girl: (lies still)

Trees: You can smell his sap.

Girl: I can smell him.  If I stay right here.

Trees: He is in you. His particles are wrapped up in yours, and you take him with you as you move. You live and breathe him.  His life is in you.

Girl (a long silence): Okay.  Maybe in a while.

Trees: It’s what people do.  You move.

Girl: Just a few more minutes here.

The projections around her grow faster, brighter, their voices rising into a chorus.  Dancers surround the girl on the stump, jumping and swaying.

Trees: 

You are never lost,

Never discarded, never abandoned,

Never broken. 

You are here.

You are above and below,

Dirt and air,

Water and light.

You cannot be gone.

You grow where you are.

You live in everything.

You are everywhere.

You are here.

<Chapter 40

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