History

Trees grow old and die very slowly. The decay can start on the inside so we don’t even know about it until it’s quite far along. They live on a different time scale from humans, longer and slower. And that slowness continues even when they are just stumps.

I’m not talking about stump sprouts, although the tenacity of trees is something to be respected - they don’t seem to find death as final as we humans do. But I’m struck by decaying stumps and the history they reveal. It’s just sitting in someone’s dooryard, yet there are ambiguous records of events that occurred long ago.

It’s hard to interpret what that history is, it’s more a fictional or a fantasy history. It leaves a lot of room for imagination. That’s part of what I love about shots like this one - I can spend hours dreaming about what happened to create the patterns and textures and colors I see, a different story every time. And it’s time well spent.