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Death of a Forest Giant
When a tree falls, it is only the beginning
It sounds like a volley of rifle shots: a burst of gunfire in the rainforest. But no one here is reckless enough to let off rounds in a place where there is no clear line of sight. The source is difficult to locate. Sound zigzags through the trees and ricochets off volcanic tumuli. Waiting for the next fusillade might occupy seconds or minutes, sometimes hours. The forest is on edge, listening. Then more gunshots –
crack
crack
crack
– as the last mooring roots strain and snap and break free from the earth.
There is a suffocating moment of indecision when the tree is caught between inertia and gravity, held in place not by roots but by geometry. Then it topples. Crashes. Drags down skeins of lianas and canopy vines, and whips up a blizzard of leaves. When it hits the ground, the sound is small, but the impact propagates through basalt and dirt in a wave that startles the forest into silence.
Turn off a narrow road slicing through rainforest between Lake Eacham and the ramparts of the Bellenden Ker Range. The trees here are so close their branches dice the sky into blue and white tesserae. The track ends in an opening in the rainforest — to a fallen tree. It is a red cedar, a species once so valuable to…
