THE POWER OF MAN

The wells ran dry. High in the sky, the sun raged on, signifying the passage of day with its angry glare that just got angrier as the day swelled. Over the towering Eucalyptus, the hawks glided, patiently waiting for a lapse in which to poach a meal from an unsuspecting predator.

There was nothing assuring about the bleak sight beneath those bulked and stalwart trunks.  There were fallen trees, some wider than three boa constrictors standing fully stretched in a circle, tail to tail. Some were freshly fallen, a half chopped fig here, a de-branched pine over there, with some rotting away in a choke of fungi, their length and girth sprayed with whitish powdery moss and some brownish mushroom with white stems, making the usually brown or rosy trunks take a completely different hue. Beside them were their stumps, jagged in accordance to how well the chainsaw ripped through. A groggy squirrel jumped timidly onto one of those stumps, sniffed about before sinking into a nearby drained scrub. The sun's rays streamed through a tiny clearing ahead of my crawling body with ease, maybe rather thankful that it got to express its heavenly wrath unhindered in atleast this one place, for the dense forest cover reduced its streams to mere specks that just dappled the cold bed but never troubled the shade.  However, soon it would hold its own celestial carnival, for the forest cover was fast dwindling owing to the invasive habits of the invaders. And on this one spot where the sun thrived as it pleased, a herbage thrived, a puny, heavy- leafed shrub with pricky stems, three-sided leaves that grew evenly along the axis and yellow-coloured flowers with a dark red centre. Aside from this luxuriant shrub, the floor of the forest was greatly empty, with the floors damp and the soil clammy. The few undergrowths were either dead or dying. If they were thriving, then they were parasitic.  It was cold too, as if this was nature's own refridgerator. The many green around the floor were of the algae that clung onto dear life on the wet bell-bottoms of the trees. Those and the spiralling  plants that grew downwards, nature's own rebel without a cause. And these parasitic plants grew so well that some hang lower than the lowest hanging branch of the looming and humming trees, brushing against the floor sofly as a wind whispered past.

From a distance, came a low buzzing sound we here had come to recognize all too well, a noise that, when it rendered the air, would go on for a lengthened time too long to be called a moment but short enough to be considered a while and its silence would portend sorrow. When it went silent, my heart jolted. There rose a choral distressed shrieking of birds, which was immediately followed with a joint flapping of wings and my eyes, angled to the skies saw, through the numerous boughs and trunks, a flight of birds crossing high above the highest branches. Some perched on the trees over my head and around me, chirping in distress. The buzzing sound rose again, and this time, went on and on and on until it became another lowly, monotonous sound that hummed and lulled one into an involuntary slumber. Occassionally, it would muffle before humming even louder the next minute. Then it stopped completely. I gave an indrawn breath. There rested, throughout the forest, a sense of trepidation within the short moment of silence that felt like an eternity, a quietude that heralded an approaching danger and I felt it that something monstrous was coming. A heavy creaking sound rose. There was the distressed screeching of monkeys and another flight of birds obscured even the tiny sunshine over my head as they flew to safety. The unsettling shudder grew more disturbing. A rumbling sound caught my ear. Somewhere in the forest, in the distance, the tip of the tall Megalocarpus, seen above all the rest, swayed and swayed.  But it was in a single direction. Oh, it wasn't swaying! It was falling. There was a blood-chilling heavy breaking of branches and some sinister, lowly whirring sound as a fray of birds screaming and trees roaring in pain compounded the disaster in progress. Then came the final thud, an elephantine and clumsy fall that sent weighty quakes around the forest and rattled the heavy trees around me as I was left clutching to a trunk as my nerves were shuddered by the falling force. There, once again, the power of man had been proven.

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