My sister asked me if trees died. I answered yes, without a thought. In my mind all things that live must die. But I’ve never seen a dead tree. I don’t mean I’ve never seen a tree that died from being pushed over by a storm or had termites actively working against it. I’ve seen trees that have met their demise by being cut down or the ground going sallow or being struck by life-sucking vines or disease. But to see a tree that has reached the end of it’s journey, I couldn’t say yes definitively. I guess the same can hold true for all plant life. My nephew has a sort of cactus outside of his home that lost a branch due to a storm. It lay on the ground, no longer a part of the larger plant, yet the buds took root and began growing. Now it is it’s own plant growing larger day by day. Perhaps I should see this as part of the life cycle. Never quite ending, never truly beginning. Just a long thread of existence, like the long lived trees. Makes you think.
Arid Testimony 