The Songs of Trees by David George Haskell

Author:David George Haskell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd

Interlude: Maple

I. Sewanee, Tennessee

35°11'46.0" N, 85°55'05.5" W

II. Chicago, Illinois

41°52'46.6" N, 87°37'35.7" W

Maple I

I stand on the ridgeline of a house, my arms reaching up into branches of the maple tree whose trunk stands two meters from the front door. In one hand I hold a living maple twig. In the other, a square aluminum frame the size of my palm. Feet steady on the roof shingles, I ease a living branch between the metal struts, centering the thin-barked twig within the frame. A plunger descends from a capsule on the aluminum top bar, holding a small metal plate on the twig’s surface. A weak spring inside the capsule pushes the plunger against the twig with a force as gentle as a breath. The pressure is so slight that the twig will grow unimpeded. Should the twig expand or contract, even by a just a fraction of a hair, the plunger’s arm will transmit this motion to sensors in the capsule. The twig’s skin now lies against the keen touch of a mechanical fingertip. A graph line on a computer screen reveals the metal fingertip’s sensory experience, taking one measurement every fifteen minutes, year-round. Now it is late winter and the tree is leafless. No water flows through the twig from stem to leaf to air. The twig therefore lies quiescent against the plate. The graph’s line is flat, disturbed only by the slight expansion and contraction of the frame’s metal on sunny days and cool nights, and by the jostling of passing squirrel feet.

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