The psychiatrist stared up at the tree. He appeared to be thinking. If he was surprised by what the patient had said he did not reveal it. He went back to flicking a pencil around his thumb.

"Bugs? Have you been taking drugs of any sort?" he finally asked.

"Do you mean pesticides?" replied the patient.

"No. No I was thinking of Psychedelics. They have been known to have that type of effect on users. When a patient complains as you do that they feel bugs crawling all over them it is often a side effect of recreational drug use."

The psychiatrist flicked the pencil a few more times, first pinching it between thumb and middle finger and then snapping the finger, causing the pencil to spin around the back of the thumb before returning to it's starting position. He had learned the trick from a Japanese exchange student in high school, and often exercised the skill during sessions with patients. The trick made him feel intelligent, or perhaps it merely made him feel that it made him look intelligent.

"Tell me more about the nature of these bugs. This might help us to understand why you are having these hallucinations. What type of insect do they appear to be?"

"They feel like they could be ants."

"Only ants? Well that shouldn't be something to worry about. What harm could a few ants do?"

"They also could be aphids. I am terrified of aphids."

"Not likely. Aphids don't crawl very vigorously. You might just as well be hallucinating scale insects."

"Well, then they could be termites."

"Termites crawling on you? That doesn't make sense. Termites, if anything would be crawling inside you."

"Inside! Why did you have to suggest that? Now I will surely have the hallucination that bugs are crawling inside me, and inside is worse than outside."

"Forgive me. I assure you that it is only appropriate to hallucinate bugs that are on the outside. But this reminds me, I have been wondering what happens when you try to brush these bugs off?"

"That's the worst part: when I go to scratch or brush them away my limbs won't move. It is as if I am paralyzed."

The psychiatrist considered this. "Interesting. You can't move your limbs? That does seem strange. But then after all you are a tree." The psychiatrist said. As he spoke he continued to flick the pencil, though here he missed the catch and it fell to the ground.

The tree, already suffering from extreme paranoia, saw this in horror. "Is that a wooden pencil! What are you trying to do to me?"

.....



The young tree was drooping.

"What is it? Is something bothering you?" Asked the older tree.

"Some of the other trees said that coal is just carbon. They said it isn't any different from other minerals."

"Who said that? Was it those sycamore sprouts? Don't listen to them. Coal is special. They may not know it, but we do. You should be proud that you believe in coal."

"But how can plants ever be coal? It doesn't look like us."

"It doesn't have to look the same as us. External appearances don't mean anything. What matters is what's inside - the essence of who you are - and that is what lives on once you become coal."

"So we really don't die? We just become coal?"

"Yes, in time, if you lead a good life and you truly believe, one day you can become coal."

"Really live? They said coal is dead."

"Did they? They just aren't believers like us. We know that our life above ground is short and meaningless compared to our existence as coal."

"But coal is inanimate."

"Where do you hear such words? Inanimate. You know some say that trees are inanimate. Do you feel inanimate?"

"No."

"Then you wont as coal either."

"How long will we be coal?"

"For eternity."

"Really?"

"Of course. As coal you will live hidden deep underground. There you will be safe from the treats of insects and forest fires, and people will not even know you are buried in the ground. Someone would have to dig you up, and who would do that? As coal you will be protected deep in the ground, so you will never again have to worry about fire."

.....



The tallest tree was so tall that whenever the wind turned aggressive the top of the tree blew several feet out of plumb. As soon the wind subsided the tree would sway back, though always by so much that it overshot the vertical, then the tree would sway forward again, with momentum plus wind causing it to once again overshoot. Through this mechanism the motion of the tree became rhythmic, like a great inverted pendulum.

"Can't you just be still, one of the shorter trees said. You are liable to hit someone."

"What are you complaining about? All of you are swaying as well."

"Yes, but we are all shorter, so we sway less, and more importantly, since we are all roughly the same height, we sway together at the same frequency. You, being taller, are completely out of sync."

The shorter trees were always making up reasons like this to give the tall tree a hard time. "Hey, keep your ugly shadow off of me" one might say, or "I saw that, you reached up and picked that bird right out of the sky, how come you never let any of us hold the big birds?" The talk of the others generally made the tall tree sad, even though it knew the other trees were just envious.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to grow this high."

"Right, I bet. And hey, your roots keep poking mine, cut it out."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to. I guess I just have longer roots because I am taller."

"Well cut it out."

"I would, but I don't have a saw."

"A saw! How crude to even speak of such horrid things. You are such a neanderthal, have you no manners?"

So it was that the tree, despite its superior stature over the other trees, developed feelings of inferiority and self loathing. "Tall trees are dumb", the tree said to itself. "If I was smarter I wouldn't have had to grow into such a big brute." Of course this reasoning made absolutely no sense, but then keep in mind that even though he wasn't actually dumber than the other trees, he was actually only as smart as a tree.

"I hope I get hit by lightning" he sometimes said, with his head in the clouds.

One day a hawk moved into the forest and began hanging out at the top of the tall tree. Such an important bird gave the other trees more reason to be jealous, but it also gave the tall tree someone to talk to to.

"Are you from around here?" the tree said to the hawk.

"No. I just flew in. You?"

"Yes," the tree replied, "I'm a native. What brings you to this neck of the woods."

"Where I come from the other birds made fun of me because I am so much bigger than them, so I have been looking for someplace new. But everywhere I go it's the same. Watch, I will me show you."

The hawk touched off and began to fly in broad circles over the forest. On his second trip around two small birds flew up from below and began to chase him. Tweeting frantically, they made darting dives towards the hawks tail, scattering whenever the hawk banked back towards them.

"See what I mean?" The hawk said once he had landed back in the tree. Its like that wherever I go.

"How mean. I didn't realize birds could be so cruel. What were they saying while they chased you?"

"Who knows. Those little birds always talk so fast that I can hardly understand. It was mostly just psychotic babble and screaming. I think i heard something like 'get the hell out of here', and one of them said to stay away from their kids - as if I might set some kind of bad example for their children.

"Wow. Even trees aren't that mean."

"Yeah, sometimes they make me so mad that I just eat them. Its the only way to get them to shut up."

"Eat them? I wish I could eat the other trees when they tease me. But trees aren't herbivores."

.....



The ironwood tree leaned closer. He was proud of his name. Iron was immune from fire and insects. Iron was hard and unforgiving like the best woods. Ironwood was a good name, better than smoke tree which was the name of someone he knew. Smoke! What a name for a tree. Might as well be called deadwood, or charcoal.

Ironwood. The name gave him confidence, which is why when the humans turned away he leaned in closer to the bonfire they had built on the soil over his roots.

Fire. Oh what a thing. Up close it seemed almost as bright as the sun, even if not as fulfilling. And yet it was fire - fire, the thing even a metallic named tree fears most. No, he was not completely stupid, he did not believe his name made him invincible to fire. He just was not ashamed of his curiosity about its light.

The tree leaned closer. It was the most dangerous temptation, to suck in that orange light while braving the heat of its source.

"What are you doing?" One of the neighboring trees had noticed. "Are you trying to start a forest fire?"

"No. Of course not. But how can we let all that light go to waste?"

"That light? It's too weak. Plus the spectrum is of limited usefulness."

"But it's so bright."

A spark, as they spoke, awoke and went free, wiggling its way through the branches of the tree.

"See. I told you. One of those devils could catch, then it's not you but all of us that are through."

The wood in the pit was mostly gone, with the flames diminished to red patches that looked like wounds festering under the gauze of smoke. It appeared that the campfire would soon go out.

Perhaps it was just chance - after all, who among us has real control over our actions - or maybe it was more, but just as the fire was almost out, a small dead branch fell from the ironwood. It landed right in the fire ring, causing sparks to shower upward and the flames to resurge.

"For crying out loud, you really are crazy. You're suicidal! Whoever heard of a mentally deranged tree. We are supposed to be emotionally stable." Said the other tree.

"I'm not suicidal, maybe I'm just cold."

"Cold? Trees can't feel temperature."

"I was speaking in the abstract psychological sense. I mean to feel warm inside - you know, that cozy reassurance you get when sitting around a fire."

"Where do you these ideas? What is cozy about burning wood?"

The small branch dropped by the ironwood was quickly consumed by the fire. The two trees were still arguing even after the last sparks had faded.

"See, the fire didn't harm us."

"That was just luck."

With that, and with nothing else to do, the ironwood went back to trying to catch stars in its branches.

"Do you see them? I tell you they are just like the sun. Most of them are even bigger than our sun. It would be a boon if we could catch a few. Think of all that energy." But the other tree had stopped listening.

.....



"Thank you all for attending this meeting. I know you all are a bit busy these days." The tree said.

"A bit? It is spring! I don't have time for your meetings." One of the other trees said.

"Yeah." Another tree said. "Why do you always need to hold meetings? I wouldn't even be here if i wasn't rooted in place."

"I apologize, but this is an important subject. We need to discuss what to do about the humans."

"Who cares about those creatures? They aren't even plants. They are just some kind of animal."

"Yeah, look how short they are. And they can't photosynthesize."

"True. They are only animals. But even an inferior organism could pose a threat to us. Have you forgotten the incident with the whiteflies?"

"This is true. But humans cant fly. What makes humans a greater threat than bears?"

"For one thing, humans don't shit in the woods."

"So?"

"So they don't contribute to soil composition."

"Hey, I saw one shit in the woods once. It was really creepy. It intentionally came up right beside me to do it. It was so weird I don't like thinking about it."

"Yeah. That happened to me once before. Its totally inappropriate. Its as if they have no manners."

"Well, so there is one problem with humans."

"Their lack of manners does not seem like enough cause for us to be concerned."

"I hate to sound racist, but what about their color? I find it completely unnatural."

"That is true. They fail to coordinate with the forest theme. All those saturated hues on the clothes they wear."

"You should talk. We have all seen those bright red flowers you are putting out."

"Oh, thanks for noticing, its just something special I put on for the season."

"That is nothing like the humans. Sometimes they will be covered with all three primary colors at once."

"Well, though I agree their overall appearance is garish, I don't see how this is a great concern. We should be tolerant of color."

"But color might signal something insidious: it makes me suspect that they don't belong here."

"I agree: they look like foreigners, and we should not trust foreigners."

"That's what I have been saying. And speaking of foreigners, what about the migrant birds. Should we be trusting them. Why do we just let them fly in and then leave with our seeds?"

"You are right about the birds. There is something suspicious about them. They talk in strange languages - we should be concerned about what they might be saying."

"But you are forgetting all the insect pests they eat, the nitrogen they cycle, and the pollination they do. There was a study last year showing that migrant birds perform a significant percent of forest seed dispersal."

"I never trust those studies - after all scientists are only human and therefore susceptible to mistakes and vanity. Besides, the foreign birds are doing all the seed dispersal because they have taken all the jobs from the local birds."

"I vote we build a wall to keep the humans and nonnative birds out."

"Great idea. And we'll make the humans pay for it."

"Won't the birds just fly over the wall?"

"That's just lies from the liberal media. Lets vote. All those in favor of building a wall?"

.....



He had never seen another tree.

Not having seen a tree, he did not know what trees looked like, and not knowing what trees looked like, he did not know that he had never seen one. If you don't know what you don't know, then you think you know everything, or at least in this instance the tree thought all were trees all up and down the street

"You are mighty short for a tree," he said one day to a parking meter. The meter did not answer, because it did not want to stop and lose count.

So the tree tried talking to the lightpost. "Brilliant! Every tree should have its own light source. You can photosynthesize at night." But tragically the light died out before it could reply.

The telephone pole across the street was similarly aloof. "We trees are certainly unfriendly. I suppose we are all just bored with each other." The only trees that did anything interesting were were the ones that moved - the smaller ones that traveled in groups along the sidewalk and sometimes passed under his branches - but he was too afraid of them to try to start up a conversation. These strange trees each had two awkward roots that did not puncture the ground, and the tree found this suspicious. Whenever he saw them approaching on the sidewalk, he thought they might be coming for his land. The tree you see lived in a three by three hole in the sidewalk and was afraid one of the moving trees would try to plant itself in his little patch of dirt, which being smaller than his canopy was hardly enough watershed for even himself. But none of these walking trees ever tried to invade his soil, so he came to speculate about how they could survive unplanted and why they needed to run back and forth all the time. "I know: they are running to catch bird shit as it falls from the sky. That would also explain why they don't need soil. Or perhaps they think they can chase down extra sun rays."

Of the different varieties of tree he had seen on the street, the tree wondered which most resembled himself. He presumed the telephone pole was a close relative. But he also liked to think he was as advanced as the lightpost. Most importantly, he hoped he was not like the strange looking ones that ran around on two disconnected roots, for they seemed confused.

One day the tree noticed that one of the moving trees was being followed. Then he realized that all of the moving trees were either following or chasing dark patches on the sidewalk. Furthermore, he noticed that the telephone pole and light meter also had dark forms at their bases, and then he finally saw that he too had a shadow. "Of course, the tree thought, once we trees suck the energy out of the sunlight it is no longer bright, so it falls on the ground in a dark puddle shaped like the tree that took its energy."

His recognition of what shadows were was an important accomplishment, as it showed him that he looked different from other trees. His shadow was fat and irregularly shaped, while the other things he had called trees all had shadows that were mostly straight and thin. From that point on he scanned the pavement, always searching for a shadow that matched his own. He watched to see if one marched up the street with the other moving trees, but one never came.

Until one summer day, near the end of the day, when the sun was finishing a very northern course through the sky, a new shadow stretched up the street. It had traveled from at least a block away, and was distorted by the distance, but just before it faded into the other shadows that would make up the night, the tree recognized it as being like its own. The source of the shadow was out of view down the street, so the tree still did not know what it looked like to look like him, but at least he knew he was not alone for there was a shadow like his own.

"What a sad story." Said the parking meter.

"Yes isn't it?" Said the telephone pole. "To imagine an isolation so great that even a shadow can bring company. Whats worse, it is a shadow that is only visible around the summer solstice."

"What are you saying?" Replied the meter. "Feel sad about the tree? Why would I feel sorry for a tree? We parking meters have no sympathy. What I meant is that listening made me feel sad, because the story took up so much of my time."