the trees are screaming

It isn’t often I take such a long car trip. The car is electric. We are planning to travel across much of France in a single day. It is the end of August and summer is still here. The weather is balmy. Not too hot, for once. We’ve stopped to charge the car. I seize the opportunity to take a short walk and sit down to meditate under a clump of trees. I am delighted to have found a patch of green so close to the motorway. It feels lovely here and the trees shield me from the sun. The breeze is warm. I close my eyes to listen to the music the wind makes.

I seize the opportunity to take a short walk and sit down to meditate under a clump of trees.

The trees are giving a concert, their branches swaying in the breeze. Then, startling me, a crackling sound. A rustling of leaves like on an October day. Like on a forest walk in autumn, when falling leaves seem to dance over the exposed roots of trees. When they whirl about in gusts of wind. When you can hear their crunch under the soles of your shoes as you walk. I get that familiar feeling, the sense that plants are coming to the end of their annual life cycle. Yet it is not even back to school week in France. The smell of summer stills lingers in the air. On the road, the cars we overtook carried rear-mounted bicycles. It is that time of year when there are more caravans than lorries on the motorway.

I open my eyes and look up at the branches above my head. Something is wrong and preventing me from withdrawing within myself to meditate. I can see green leaves, but they are completely dried out. They bear the stigmata of a summer of repeated heatwaves and droughts. We are in 2023 and the disturbance of the climate has reached unprecedented levels on every metric. The trees still have leaves but their rustling in the breeze sounds like an autumnal concert in the middle of summer. This disturbs and dispirits me. My brain struggles to make sense of a phenomenon so at odds with the laws of nature as I know them. I rise to my feet and instinctively hug a tree. To comfort it and myself. And for a long while, I just stand there without moving. In this embrace, I finally reach the meditative state that I was hoping to find when I first sat down under this clump of trees.

They bear the stigmata of a summer of repeated heatwaves and droughts.

In my head, the music of the leaves becomes the sound of trees screaming in agony. So this is what is going on. I think of these tall lords of nature. How they stood there long before my life began. Majestic, dignified, strong and benevolent. How, through the process of photosynthesis, they quietly create the conditions that allow us to thrive on this earth. How they never stop growing but keep striving for light and sky. And how they grow in two directions at once, how the fanning of their roots under the ground mirrors their canopies. How their beautiful inner growth keeps them steady as they reach for the sky.

In my head, the music of the leaves becomes the sound of trees screaming in agony. So this is what is going on.

My own introspective path to individuation suddenly strikes me as rather trivial compared with the spiritual growth of the large tree I am holding between my arms. In the distance, I can hear the rumbling of the motorway. Families heading home from their holidays with their bikes on their cars and pensioners towing their caravans across France, as lorry drivers zoom by at high speed. Do these people realise the tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes? Can they hear the deafening silence of the screaming trees? Do they also feel sad? How could anyone bear so much suffering?

Do these people realise the tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes?

I let go of the tree and walk back to the car whose battery has had plenty of time to charge. I find my travel companions and we head back on the road. They played beach tennis on the parking lot near the charging station while I wasn’t with them. They look happy and feel recharged, like the car, by our non-descript stop on the long road back. As we resume our journey across France, I find the courage to tell them I heard the trees screaming. They express surprise. They heard nothing and didn’t notice anything unusual about the trees bordering the charging station. What about you? Have you ever heard the sound of trees when they scream?