Dear Marlow

Dear Marlow,

The hike up to the summit of Mt. Washington was as physically rigorous as you said it would be. I appreciate you showing us the most scenic route! As a result I got some stunning panorama pictures of the various vista’s: the shots I got from Lion’s Head are currently serving as wallpapers on my desktop.

I couldn’t get any good shots till we got up to around there ‘cause until then we weren’t yet over the tree line. Being under the tree line had it’s perks, though; in the densest parts of that dominantly Spruce­ Fir Boreal forest, when we were surrounded by foliage, the scenery seemed pretty unreal. Ferns, moss, and rocks filled the forest floor and shaped the understory into a verdant sea that became sparse as our altitude increased. Splendid brooks serenely babbled throughout the ascent and constantly provided fresh water for our bottles to be filled up with. Every now and then we could get premature glimpses of the mountainous vistas through gaps in a needley emerald canopy that was vibrant with birdsong. Above the tree line, however, lichen, moss, and the seldom patch of mountain flowers became the only apparent flora as the rivers seemed to vanish and the scenery turned from mostly green to mostly grey. Once dappled sunrays became direct and inescapable: our only shelter from the heat became the buffeting wind.

As enjoyable as our hike was, our performance as hikers was worse than amateur: we put ourselves in grave danger. We should’ve paid closer attention to the directions you gave us… Next time we ought to have you lead, ‘cause Toby failed horribly at it!

The first night we set up camp down in a valley by that site you recommended near Hermit Lake, and barely made it there, ‘cause we got lost on the way down from the summit: Toby dropped the map when we were going down what we thought was Tuckerman’s Ravine. It was totally his fault (don’t beat yourself up too hard for not being there to help).

The descent proved to be one of the scariest experiences of my life. Somehow we weren’t even on the actual Tuckerman’s Ravine trail; it was too dark to see anything: we found a river and tried following it to safety. Joe was in front, trailblazing through a dense mixture of Krummholz and Dwarf trees, while Toby and I screamed at the top of our lungs for help. There was a point when we were crawling over the canopy of these Krummholz and Dwarf trees, regrouping on enormous glacial erratics, just to get a lookout on where we were and to see if we could spot the actual trail. It was too dark: the only trail was that damned river; we could hear its current and we could see a gap in the foliage where it cut through the teeming vegetation. Often the branches would break and either Joe, Toby, or I would drop from sight, plummet to the forest floor, and would need to be helped out of crevices by one another. I don’t know how we never broke a limb in the process... the only injury happened days later when Joe rolled his ankle. It was way too windy to set up camp above the tree line, we had no idea where the river led to, and we could hear either a pack of coyotes or wolves howling in the distance... At the time, panic really started setting in.

Fortunately, soon enough, Joe saw headlamps through the thicket on his left and heard voices calling out. The headlamps were strapped to the heads of hikers who had come up from their campsites in response to our cries for help. Thus we came to the realization that we were actually running parallel to the Tuckerman’s Ravine trail the entire time. The epiphany was both infuriating and relieving. We were too tired to do anything but gratefully grunt our thanks to whatever God we believed in and trudge through the thicket and into their line of sight. Our rescuers kindly led us down the trail, into the valley, and to our destination where we set up camp somewhere in the Spruce ­Fir Boreal forest that enveloped Hermit Lake.

Near-death­ experience aside: the camping experience was, by definition; magical!

We originally planned on spending more than a week at Hermit Lake. We ended up enjoying our time there a lot, and at first we dreaded leaving; it was absolute paradise. We had moved from our campsite amidst the forest and pitched our tent right on the water bank. We had plenty of food and could have stayed two weeks if we wanted. Each day we went out adventuring: collecting flowers, swimming under waterfalls, swimming in Hermit Lake, etc.  

All was well until, one day, a tree started striking up conversation with us. At that point we wanted to get out of there real fast.

We had been collecting flowers that day and picked up a cap of some mushroom species we hadn’t seen yet: it was red with white polka dots. Toby instantly plucked one of them into his mouth before anyone of us could intervene. He just smiled and laughed. Considering he didn’t look like he was dying or having any adverse reaction to the mushroom we each ingested one of the little buggers and stored some more in my fanny ­pack for later on. We joked that in a half hour we would start to hear the trees talk to us. But it actually took 30 seconds before a Heartleaf Birch Dwarf tree, situated in the middle of a cluster of Red Spruces and asked us what we were doing.

We all froze; at present I am honestly unsure if the mushrooms we had ingested were some kind genetically altered hallucinogenic super strain. At the time I feared they had been Death Cap mushrooms and we were all in purgatory. I was mostly afraid that this little tree was about to condemn me for having slacked with recycling all of my life. These thoughts were silenced as it sounded again.

“Are you scientists, too?” It asked.

“W­-W-What? No. We’re hikers. Are you a talking tree?” Joe stammered.

“I am indeed. A grateful one, too. I have been rooted here for hurricanes with so much to talk about and no one to ever listen. It’s a pleasure to have been discovered yet again. Will you hear my tale?”

Its leaves rustled, its branches swayed, but the wind hadn’t blown. Toby, Joe, and I all looked at one another. I took the mushroom out from my fanny­ pack and chucked them as Joe began to openly weep. Toby merely blinked and let out a giggle.

“Look, to be honest, you’d be doing me a favor here. It’s been a couple of days since those scientists showed up and after they left I finally understood what I have to do.”

Toby, Joe, and I just kept looking at each other with mixed expressions of confusion, terror, and amazement.

“Aren’t there any more talking trees or something like that?” Joe asked, tears ran down his cheeks, as he struggled to speak in between his heaving breaths of utter despair.

“No. I only ever get Mary to drop in once in awhile.”

“Who’s Mary?” Toby inquired. He was eerily calm.

“I think she’s what you scientists call a coyote.”

“We’re not scientists,” I corrected, shaking.

“You look like the last ones I encountered.”

“Scientists are people who study science,” I said.

Joe wailed catatonically. He was rocking back in forth in fetal position.

“So, you’re just like scientists, but you don’t study science?”

Toby and I exchanged bewildered glances while Joe continued his struggle to cope with the moment. I don’t think any of us had ever thought about explaining the semantics of professions to a talking tree.

“We’ll at least I know you’re not a coyote. Or are you? I’m quite sorry I just thought all you two legged mobile creatures were scientists.”

“Who are these scientists you talk about?” I asked in an attempt to roll with the maddening reality or hallucination before us.

“We’re just humans,” Joe whimpered.

I wasn’t sure if he was consoling himself or talking to the tree.

“Oh, well, they were the ones that helped me find my purpose in life.”

We decided there was no point in fighting it: we had to embrace this strange turn of events, or this hallucination, or this purgatory for the environmentally profane. We tried to settle down and let the tree do it’s talking. Or I guess its ‘thing’ would be a more apt way of putting it.  Joe took some quelling; Toby had to hold him in his arms and murmur a lullaby: I do think it was Toby’s only helpful contribution to the entire trip. The tree laughed at this sight. Its laugh was more of a spooky cackle that actually shook the ground beneath us. I was mad ‘cause the cackle made Joe go into a fit of crying again and made me involuntarily urinate in my pants.

What followed was a bizarre and kind of touching exploration into the life of an existentially troubled dwarf birch: one born with sight but without eyes, conscious but sedentary, and able to speak but without anyone to talk to. Or, at the very least, anyone who could talk back. He told us that in all his years of talking to different animals he only ever got Mary to come back and it was because there was a preferred spot of hers, nearby, where she would raise her pups with the help of her sisters. The father stuck around too, the birch said, though he said he didn’t really like him. He thought Mary could do better than that.

Now, I know what you must be thinking, my dear Marlow: I have absolutely lost it. And while I do, strangely enough, find the idea of my marbles having been lost somewhere in the woods a bit more comforting than the implications of a talking birch I must implore you to believe me. If the birch was honest ­­ which I verily believe he was (can’t believe I’m writing about the trustworthiness of a talking birch tree) ­­ I believe the scientists should be about to publish their findings soon enough. It might take them some time though. Apparently they told the tree that they would come back to record and film him, as evidence, seeing as someone’s word isn’t precisely very becoming of someone of the scientific persuasion.

All I can say is that the birch is one magnificent storyteller. Almost as good as I. He told us his life story just as he had to those scientists he spoke of. He told us about his humble beginnings as a small seedling. He reminisced upon his miraculous survival of a forest fire that the scientists said happened some time in the late thirties, his perseverance through various snow and ice storms, and how he avoided a bout of insect and disease plague that the scientists claimed hit the forest during the eighties. He also mentioned the supreme sadness he felt when beavers came and murdered his only friend ever, named Conrad, who was a fellow tree that had been living next him for about a decade before those furry little devils gorged on his poor heart… wood. The birch made us know that it was very important to him that we remember Conrad had a very big and kind heartwood. I’m telling you Marlow, this birch is an excellent storyteller. I wanted to go out and massacre as many beavers I could find after he told us about Conrad’s untimely demise. He is also quite the teacher: he gave us a brief lesson on how to speak Coyote.

He eventually proceeded to tell of the time that he first ever encountered people; and I’m ashamed to say, 18th century humans were like beavers albeit to a worse degree. He said he could only hear them at first, from afar, as they cut down trees to set up farms. He speculated that the forest that we were all in wasn’t settled because it was situated where the soil wasn’t as fertile and it was too far from civilization. He recalled how terrified he became when some fleeing animals told him that humans were turning trees into houses. He said the thought of being mutilated into a shape for humans to live in led to many restless nights. He claimed it led to his leaves falling out earlier than usual for a few of the following years.

But if the 18th century was a scary time for the birch, the 19th century was petrifying. He said he was told of droves upon droves of other trees that were being chopped down and then driven off or fed to “giant metal monsters” with “fiery stomachs.” According to the scientists these “fiery monsters” were actually machines apart of the mining operations that were going on at the time within Mt. Washington State Park.

Eventually the mass destruction of trees was mostly halted, so animals stopped fleeing in his direction and warning him about human activity, as new generations of trees began to grow in place of destroyed ones and disturbed ecosystems started to recover. Apparently the scientists called it all an era of “soft deforestation.” His branches shook as he conceived to us the horror of an ecosystem subjected to “hard deforestation.” I rubbed his bark, gently told him not to think like that, and to get on with it. He said it’s all been uphill: since then he was only told of little temporal cloth houses that were erected during various summers and springs. I think this might’ve been either when the Mt. Washington State Park was established or during the years leading up to it.

After the tree had wrapped up his rather disturbing experiences with humans he told us about his enlightening experience with the scientists he had met a couple of days ago and how they had explained so much to him.

“So, what is your purpose in life?” asked Toby. It was what we were all wondering.

“The scientists told me: I can observe, I can contemplate, and I can communicate. My purpose is to tell my story,” the birch replied.

While I was writing this letter to you, my Facebook feed blew up, and it appears the boys and I were not hallucinating! After seeing the most bizarre news interview of my life, I have no idea what comes next.

All I know, Marlow, is that I’m not getting a Christmas tree next winter... I refuse to support such a barbarous industry! Anyway, let’s go hiking soon and let’s visit the magical tree!

Sincerely,

Ethan Webb