The Forest

 

(After hiking with my wife today, the following allegory for our political times got stuck in my head.  Thanks for reading and tell me what you think.)

Once there was a vast forest that was dying, at least it looked like it from far, far away.  Beside that forest was a dry desert that was desolate and dark.  In the desert stood the people who spoke in short shouts and called themselves Chain and in the forest roamed the people who whispered with scattered words and called themselves Silk.  While the Chain people are complicated and sometimes speak like the Silk, this is a story of the Silk. 

The Silk people saw that their forest was ailing in the very least.  Without the forest, the entire land would die, because everyone depended upon it, even the chain people.  The Silk people wished to do something to revive the forest to health so that it would not also become a dark desert and were divided into camps on how to fight for a healthy forest.  One camp decided it would be best to burn the forest down and start over.  They believed that only by erasing the entire forest could they make room for new, healthy trees and shrubs that would restore their home.  This camp was strong and certain.  They spoke in forest terms, but with the same short, loud gasps that reminded everyone of the Chain speak.  When some of the whisper Silks would ask if the forest was healing on its own, or if there may be a less destructive way to heal it, the other, boisterous Silks would get angry and accuse them of not caring deeply for the forest, without acknowledgement of these concerns, no matter how much merit them may have.  The urgency was too severe.  The challenge too vivid.  The echo too thunderous.  

The other camp spoke more quietly but with certainty that fire would be harmful.  See, for years, the other camp of Silks had been finding sunny spots in the huge forest, planting trees and shrubs, and they lived in many of those spaces.  They saw the deep litter on the forest floor and the standing dead trees that would become too hot if there were a fire.  When this camp of Silks would see Ailanthus or striped maple or other occasional trees that were harmful to the forest, they would cut them off and treat the stumps, but for the most part, this camp believed that many of the trees of the forest still may be healthy since they examined the trees every day.  The first camp of Silks persisted, however, and convinced all Silks that even if there were a few new healthy trees in the forest, fire was the only way.  If you just wanted to plant trees, you were wasting time, and were just helping to make new dark desert for the Chains. 

So, the day came when the Silks would burn the forest down.  They invested everything to ensure the fire would spread.  They placed fuel throughout the forest to make sure it spread near and far.  “Afterall, this is the only way to make sure that desert doesn’t spread,” they would say with haste.  Throughout the first day and into the night, fires were lit all around.  The fuel helped, and the fire carried.  The Silks first began to see that all of those old trees that had some green growth began to rapidly accelerate the burn.  The Silks in the Camp that had planted trees in open meadows throughout the woods saw those trees begin to ignite along with the others, intensified by the heat all around.  For a second day, the fire continued to sweep through the forest.  “It is our only hope to avoid the widening desert,” the Silks continued to say.  For 4 days the fire continued.  The deep litter throughout the forest led to a heat they had never seen before.  It burned the trees and then permeated down into roots and scorched the fertile soil all around.  Silks held out hope, saying that they hadn’t wanted to, but that this was the only way.  Some Silks began to complain that this had not been their idea, that they were tree planters afterall.  One week went by, then 2, and then on the 21^st day, the fire was out.  As smoke lay on the ruins of the old forest, the Silks waited and the Chains looked on.  Lying to their fore, after low clouds of heavy smoke parted, was nothing but desert.  In their haste to maintain their forest, the Silks had just made more land for the Chains.  The Silks were despondent.  The fire-starters asked the tree-planters to help them re-seed the old forest, but it was indescernable from the old desert of the chains.  “It will take years for the soil to be fertile again,” said the tree planters. 

The Chains and the fire-starting Silks just shouted in short, loud sentences to each other.  Looking on, the tree planter Silks saw that the Chains and the loud Silks may have used different words, but their methods and culture were the same.  That none of these loud people understood what had been the precious forest afterall.