Healing and Decay

I’ve been looking recently at removed limbs, places where someone made a decision to cut off a branch of a tree. In this image, we can tell that the branch of this pine was sawn off. Thus we can assume this wasn’t an accident. Why was it done? Not surprisingly i have no idea.

But what really captured my attention is the interplay in this image of healing and decay. We can see the bark near the severed limb beginning the slow process of growing over the area of the severed limb, an attempt to slowly mend the wound. But in the same image, we can see the deterioration toward the bottom of where the limb was.

The impulse to heal is strong, even in the face of decay. Which is moving faster? There’s no way to know. It seems life-affirming to work on healing even in the face of decline and rot. Perhaps there’s a lesson here for humans.