A tree alive 14 years ago now casts a bigger shadow. The tree’s branches provide more shade, and its leaves create more oxygen. The tree’s roots hold tighter against the wind and storms that work so hard to unroot it. It braces more for snow and, now that it’s taller, fears lightning with a noted reverence. The tree has more rings, but no more answers to the events of then and the events of now.
A tree planted 14 years ago is now fully itself. The once small sapling has a life of its own. The tree is part of the ecosystem of nature and humans. The tree shelters children from the sun and the storms. The oxygen the tree provides makes the world a little bit better.
A tree cut down 14 years ago still leaves an empty space. Even after its stump is removed and roots dissipate, no tree can replace it. The sun is brutal in the place where the tree once stood. The empty space is a reminder of what once was.
After 14 years, the living trees—young and old—reach out their branches to fill in the gaps left by the trees that are gone, but they know there are holes they cannot replace. The young trees and the old trees still feel the lost trees’ roots and have built their own networks out of them. The molecules the trees breathe in were once in the leaves of the trees now gone—reminders in little droplets of those that came before. In memory and mulch, the fallen trees continue on in the whispers between the trees passed by the wind.