When the Oaks Spoke

The light filtering through our canopies was muted with haze. The humans were operating their noisy yellow beasts again in a neighboring grove, belching smoke and compressing soil. Our neighbors sent us warning signals through the mycelium network underground. Destruction. Then our connection to the neighboring grove winked out into silence. It was not the silence of winter dormancy, which we knew well. It was a different kind of silence: final and absolute. We had endured droughts, lightning strikes, and floods. Such things unfolded across generations. This devastation arrived within the lifetime of saplings. We knew death. We surrendered limbs to storms and elders to rot, before new growth and life would return, all in balance. But balance requires time, and the humans had stolen that from us. It was at this moment we decided the time had come to choose one to impart the Knowing.

“You have been chosen to speak with the humans,” we told One-Of-Many. “They have gone too far in their ruin and taken us out of balance. We are to impart the Knowing in order to heal.”

“How will the humans be drawn to me?” One-Of-Many asked. It was only 120 seasons old; a juvenile in our grove.

“The humans are drawn to your shade and closeness to the riverbank. Speak to the small one who throws stones into the river. Children are more receptive to the language of trees.”

We observed as the child ambled down the well-worn path along the river. The child would occasionally bend down and inspect a stone for its smoothness, shape, and weight, with only the finest specimens getting stuffed into their pockets. One-Of-Many emitted Resonance, a deep rumbling vibration, to draw the child to its bark. The child stopped gathering stones and turned toward One-Of-Many. When the child brushed their fingertips against its bark, the Knowing began.

Energy pulsed from our kin, the conifers on the mountainside miles away, across mycelium deep underground, through our root structures, and into One-Of-Many’s bark. The child was flooded with centuries of our memories. The river migrating and changing course over many seasons. Salmon runs every fall. Humans arriving, first with their axes, then with their machines. Droughts wilting our leaves and scorching our branches, the heat unbearable. Floodwater drowning our roots beneath airless soil. Emitting warning signals to neighboring groves through heady scents on the breeze. Ash darkening the sky following a wildfire. Sap bursting into steam beneath our bark. The lonely hoots of owls and the cheery whistles of orioles diminishing to silence as they abandoned their nests, and then us. Though the Knowing happened within an instant for us, it likely felt much longer for the child.

After the Knowing ended, the child staggered back, wide-eyed, stones tumbling out of their pockets. They raced back down the path and out of sight.

“The child seemed frightened. Are they hurt?” asked One-Of-Many.

“Not hurt. Overwhelmed. It will pass. Now we shall see if the seed of Knowing will take,” we said.

While a human parent carefully dotes over their children, tending to every bruise and hurt, we have to trust that our seeds, carried by fickle wind and birds and squirrels, will one day sprout. In the same way, we had a deep trust that the child would return to help us. Imparting the Knowing to a human is a sacrifice done only in times of dire need, hastening our decay. After the child left us, our leaves thinned from our crowns. When the child returned again, they skipped with another child around us, occasionally touching their palms to One-Of-Many and squealing with delight, startling birds from their branches. Our bark had begun to peel from our trunks, inviting beetles to skitter inside of us. Once healthy limbs and branches dropped to the forest floor. Many seasons later, the child had grown to an adolescent, and sat silently, reading at the base of One-Of-Many. A sickness had spread through our grove that season: some of us suffered bleeding, oozing cankers — giant gashes vertically bisecting our trunks.

One day when the child returned to us, they had grown into a young adult. They walked down the path near the river, then stood at the base of One-Of-Many. The seasons had been unkind to One-Of-Many, whose bark was gnarled and rotting. Despite this, the adult reached out and touched its bark, their expression pinched with worry.

“I’m sorry I took so long to return,” they said. “I wish I knew how to help you.”

Such human folly, to think one individual is responsible for such an undertaking, we thought.

“Perhaps… I can show the human… how we cooperate… help them understand,” said One-Of-Many, its voice muted and fragmented.

“You understand the risk of imparting the Knowing in your state?” we asked.

“I understand,” One-Of-Many said.

The second Knowing was not nearly as powerful as the first; energy trickled rather than surged through the bark of One-Of-Many to the adult. Flickers of memories emerged. Birds and squirrels dispersing our seeds. Communicating with neighboring groves through the mycelium. Sharing water and nutrients among our young and sick to help them grow.

Once it ended, the Knowing took its toll on One-Of-Many. It began to rapidly decay, bark cracking and shriveling far faster than any natural process would occur. After a few moments, One-Of-Many’s trunk was felled with a heavy thud, and all that remained was no more than a stump. Our connection to One-Of-Many winked out, its root system gone cold. After One-Of-Many had fallen, the light scattered across the leaf litter on the forest floor where it once stood, highlighting its emptiness.

The adult knelt down to its stump and whispered, “Thank you.” Water fell from the adult’s eyes, gently raining on the soil below, before they walked down the path by the river and out of sight.

In the seasons that followed, we experienced stronger storms than we’d ever endured, maiming the weakest in the grove. Winters shortened. False springs coaxed tender buds into frost-death under sudden cold and wrought havoc on acorn production. A fierce wildfire razed our conifer kin on the mountainside. Each year, fewer and fewer of us arose from the deep slumber of winter to the fresh warmth of spring, until we could hardly be considered a grove anymore. Our forest had lain silent for a long time, the usual animals absent.

Then there was a change — subtle, at first. Rainwater once again sank deep into loosened earth. We sensed the presence of new growth: saplings growing in the neighboring grove that had been demolished by humans seasons earlier. Our friends, the orioles and the owls, the squirrels, and even the deer and bears who had frequented our forest, slowly began to return. Other groups of animals too — humans, collecting soil, wrapping cloth around our bark, and making notes in journals.

One day a group of humans arrived in our grove. As the humans came closer, we recognized the young adult who received the Knowing had aged into an older adult. They were leading a group of children and young adults. The children and young adults oriented themselves toward the older adult as saplings do to light.

The older adult spoke to them, pointing to the fallen log of One-Of-Many. “Did you know that trees have memories?” they asked. “Look at these rings. Each ring shows a year of this tree’s life. Look even closer. See that sprout? This tree is making a new habitat for seedlings to grow.” After the older adult was done speaking, the group of children left with the young adults, while the older adult stayed behind.

The human touched One-Of-Many’s stump and said, “Hello, old friend.” Nearby, new leaves trembled in the breeze. They sat down beside the stump for some time, watching the river flow freely toward the sea. Then they stood, picked up a stone, and skipped it across the river, before walking along the well-worn path and out of sight.