The Forest

This is a school project for science, so I needed to include information on a certain disease. Anyway enjoy.

There is unrest in the forest. There is trouble with the trees. I am alone now. There used to be more of us chestnut trees. Now it is just a clearing. I don’t know how I can deal with the pain anymore. I watched the fungus kill my friends and the knowledge makes it even worse.

The fungus entered their bodies through wounds and grew under the bark until the cambium was dead all around the tree. Sprouts that developed at the base of the tree grew and then became infected, starting the process all over again, until I was all that was left.

It all started when those long-haired high hippies came traipsing through the forest with their bare feet, the perfect home for fungus, transplanting Japanese and Chinese chestnut trees, that already contained the fungus. Stupid hippies always make everything worse, although I am fairly certain that birds and animals are capable of transporting the fungus as well.

I said I was alone but that is not entirely true. There are several oaks and maples nearby, but they are constantly fighting and not even the elder chestnuts, may they decompose in peace, could understand them. It seems like only the chestnuts are hated by this fungus. Too bad, if it wasn’t I wouldn’t have to listen to the other trees’ infernal war.

It is winter now and all my leaves have died, revealing the ugly cankers all over my once beautiful body. Not that it matters. The only ones around to see my shame are the maples and oaks. Who cares what they think, if they even deign to notice the inferior races.

A migrating bird stopped by the other day. It told of other similarly cankered trees in the dirt hole they call New York City. The humans noticed this group’s cankers. Although, they were ultimately unsuccessful the humans tried to control the spread of the fungus. They used chemical treatments, clear-cut, and burned down massive amounts of trees. Like every other time humans have tried to cure a supposed man-made environmental problem they merely succeeded in making things worse for all involved.

A human was here recently running his bare hands all over me, and now carrying the fungus to all the other chestnut trees.

Now there are more humans running around the place. Just what I couldn’t wait to see, more tree hugging hippies.

The humans have started to do some weird operation where they graft a piece of another tree to my body, one that has grown immune to the fungus. That’s exactly what a tree needs to feel better, someone else’s arm. Oh! How did these hippies ever guess? Needless to say the operation caused me more harm than it cured.

Finally the hippies are gone and I am left alone with maple and oak’s war. What Fun!

It has been two years since the Hippies. I am still alive and still in pain, it hasn’t gotten worse but it hasn’t gotten better. I can feel two different strands of fungus, one presumably from the other tree’s arm, warring inside my body. The new one prevents the old one from killing me. Why can’t the hippies be more like their forefathers and just cut us down, at least that way something useful will happen with our bodies and we won’t live in agony for two years.

It has been five years since the operation and I can feel the original fungus finally winning its war over my body.

Maple’s note: Finally, that complaining chestnut is dead and we can expand our territory.

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