Charliesbirdblog: Mountain Ash forest, Victoria 2005

The following is a short poem written (mainly) in my head as I stood staring into the canopy of the incredible Mountain Ash forest, in the Blue Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne, Victoria in December 2005.

The Australian Mountain Ash Eucalyptus regnans is the world's tallest hardwood tree and the world's tallest flowering plant.

The largest reliably measured living specimen, Icarus Dream, was rediscovered in Tasmania in January, 2005 and is 97 metres high. It was first measured by surveyors at 98.8 metres in 1962 but the documentation had been lost. Ten living mountain ash trees in Tasmania have been reliably measured in excess of 90 metres (Tasmanian Giant Trees Consultative Committee, ref. 2).

Few living specimens in Victoria exceed 90 metres. The famous Ferguson Tree, a Mountain Ash in Victoria that fell after a bushfire, was measured by tape by a government surveyor, William Ferguson, on 21 February 1872, at 133 metres (436 feet). Its crown had broken off and the diameter of the trunk at that point was still one metre, leading to an estimate that when it was intact the tree would have exceeded 150 metres (500 feet). If so, it may well have been the tallest living thing ever known on the planet...

Hey You

Hey you
What's it like up there
Reaching into the clouds
Brushing up against the sky?
You must be - what - a hundred miles high...
And not just high
But solid straight,
Smooth up and down
Barely a branch
For years and years
Solid strong too
Even when the wind blows
Through you
Hardly move
Suppose you drop a leaf though...
I guess it takes
Two days to fall
From way up there
To the forest floor
Down here?
Or more
I'd like to wait, but
I'm not sure
I have the time to spare...
I wonder why...
Here's a thought -
Shouldn't you have lights
On top to stop
Aeroplanes from flying into you?
And imagine if
You were steps
I don't think there'd be
Enough energy
In a lifetime
For me to climb you.
But if I could
What a view
Clear across to Melbourne
Onto Alice Springs
Or maybe
The other way
To Sydney and
The Tasman Sea
And you did all this with just
Water, sugar, and light -
Not a concrete beam or
Steel rod in sight.

What did you think about
All those years
Growing one cell at a time
For so long?
Growing bigger than elephants
And whales,
And elephants
standing on whales
With giraffes on top.
Maybe
For a tree
It's just like doing a job,
Growing.
'Nothing special',
Just 'what you do' -
But can I say
You do it very well...
Beautiful
Except
I hope you don't mind me saying
Back down to Earth
Now I look
You show your age
Down by your roots
A little battle-scarred
And marked,
Tracked with tiny feet,
Deep-dark brown
And weather-stained...
But then
You've seen an awful
Lot of weather
All the way up there
And all the way down here too...
You must have seen so much...
How do you remember it all
The sun the rain the wind
The changing land
The city moving closer
The people...?
Or maybe
Time moves differently
If you're a tree:
A year's a day
And I'll have come and gone
Before you've
Even time to notice me.
And moving differently -
No point rushing if
you're going to be
around so long...
Just taking your time
Contemplating...

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