Cedar

Beyond the kissing gate and crocuses hiding in the undergrowth lies a magical, forested world. Lime trees heave with raindrops like melting, dripping honey. Parakeets squawk their little lungs out and swoop through the verdurous canopy. Acer trees are shifting between seasons, half leaf, half flame. High archways of holly spill onto the pathways and reflect evening sunlight into a silvery mirage. Wind crawls behind me as I make my way through to the clearing.

I know who I am going to see.

Across the cushioned lawn, dappled with puddles, the forest opens to reveal her. Tall, imposing, grand, she stands out amongst the rest of the woods like a queen. Her trunk is wide, and her bark ridged, grey in the shadows and golden where the sun caresses her skin. Her branches are delicate, graceful hands. In a trance-like state, people are drawn away from the manor house they planned to visit, and towards her aura of ancient knowing.

But she is now so broken.

Half of her main trunk is missing, yanked out of her – an open wound not yet healed. The branch that my father lifted me onto, that I clung to with my small, child-soft hands, now lies on the ground, hacked into 24 pieces. Her longest remaining limb reaches out to the wood that used to be her body. A fence surrounds her, stopping anyone from getting too close. She is no longer a nurturer of family days out; her fragility makes her a danger to us. I will never again feel her rough bark against my skin. Never play with my mother, father, and sister on a summer’s day under her shelter. Birds cry out from trees all around her, yet none choose Cedar as their resting place for the impending night.

A lady passes, heels clacking and handbag swinging, video calling someone. “And this tree has been here for hundreds of years, but half has broken off now. It’s a Cedar of Lebanon… It’s so old… And so beautiful.” The slow death of Cedar is mourned by my whole town. We all heard about how she fell apart on a recent calm, summer’s night. No storm to break her, just natural decay caused by a sickness that resides deep inside her. We grieve her weakening body. And we all love her for the memories she’s given us.

We think she is almost 350 years old, thought to be the second oldest of her kind in the country. I once saw a picture of her as a teenager. Two young women stood in their Victorian finery on the gravel path that still exists, posing in front of her. She was young and spindly then, a lanky, awkward adolescent yet to bloom into the magnificence she became. But now a mangy crow pecks at the ground beneath her feet, eyeing her up like she’s a mighty, but dying, animal. A mulberry tree is fenced in with her, peering out of the enclosure onto the world beyond; the Queen’s courtier entrusted to remain with her until her inevitable demise.

I walk past a young woman carrying the café sign away, named after Cedar, closed for the end of day. I sit down on a bench overlooking the grand lake, its water reflecting the bruised sky. My shoes are wet and my fingertips numb. Cedar looks smaller and frailer from here, almost in pain. But she is one of the last golden things that remain. As the trees surrounding her ready themselves for a winter’s sleep, she stays awake, keeping watch on the world around. Evergreen, Cedar embodies eternity. And she has done such a good job of this for so many years. But she seems tired, and I fear she is waning. Her limbs are weak, and her head hangs low. I gaze on at her, savouring her presence and remembering how she once held me as a child. Because one day soon, I might live to see her die.