Greetings from the desk of Kate Coughlan

A PAIR OF BEAUTIFUL liquidambar trees in a nearby park show me everything about how they are weathering life. Right now, they look tired. In these hot, dry Auckland days, their leaves are curling and beginning to glow in a shade of russet that might be named Exhausted Red if it were a paint colour. More leaves drift slowly to the ground each day, giving up trying to feed the tree. They melt away slowly, initially becoming transparent shadows and vanishing into the soil. It seems to me that the trees are enjoying this cooling- off period and may even be looking forward to the crisper air settling around their bare branches.

It must be tough being a tree. If an irritating bug comes biting at its bark and sucking at its sap, it can’t flip up a branch to dislodge the annoyance. When things get tricky, it can’t uproots and move to a better spot. It’s stuck where it was planted for better or worse. All its required nutrients come to it via rain, sunshine and the amazing underground communities of bacteria, fungi and microbes. Unlike its human admirers who must scurry hither and yon to find food, work, connect with family and seek safety, trees stand silent and still.

It makes me think of Dr Seuss’s eerie fable, The Lorax.

“Way back in the days when the grass was still green and the pond was still wet and the clouds were still clean, and the song of the Swomee Swans rang out in space... one morning, I came to this glorious place. And I first saw the trees! The Truffula Trees! The bright- coloured tufts of the Truffula Trees! Mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze.”

How lucky to be alive in the days when the grass is still green, the pond still wet and the clouds still clean. However, I wonder why one tree succumbs to autumn earlier than the other. Do trees also have various levels of adaptability and vulnerability? They are growing within metres of each other, and neither has a visible advantage: same soil, same sunshine, and access to water. Yet one has lost most of its foliage while the other is yet to begin its elegant fade into Exhausted Red.

And that’s just as it is with humans. We face challenges, and some grow; others get bowled over. No fault, no blame. No obvious weakness, no character failings. No idea why it happens that way. It simply does. Luck.

The lesson of the trees is in their quiet support of one another through tough times. In their communities of tiny critters below the earth’s surface delivering sustenance and support. Sharing and caring without judgement. No accolades sought. Just acceptance, believing it is worth looking towards the bright side of life and listening to The Lorax, who said: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”