“Tree Stumps — Western Shoreline — Nookamka” by Nici Cumpston
John has always loved nature; they planted many trees in their childhood and was always helping his parents doing outdoor nature tasks such as gardening and has been fascinated by his surroundings. For John’s 8th birthday, he received a very special gift which was a tree seed.
He adored this tree and cared for it every day. This tree turned out to be an extremely rare type of tree, being a non-native type of tree it was extremely heat resistant as it liked to stay moist and disliked dryness. John cared for his tree for many years, from child to his graduation, to when he was married, he has tended to his tree every day which sat amongst a bunch of his other trees near the sandy shoreline.
The day was boiling, it was a day in the extremely hot summer weather. The shoreline looked like a vast desert with the few trees near it even the animals hiding under the shade provided by the trees could feel the sun glaring down and the ones being none the wiser and had set foot outside into the open landscape had been exposed to the searing landscape and retreated to the homely shelter under the thin layer of leaves. Suddenly, the wind picked up speed and a flash of lightning struck down onto a tree while the searing heat was being blown into the trees: a fire suddenly started.
There was a wall of flame, consuming everything in its path and roared menacingly like a beast. Smoke rose and became thicker and thicker, Smaller trees were consumed one by one while bigger trees got engulfed by the flames as it started to slowly burn it down– this is what they see and flashback to when they see the tree stumps near the western shoreline. As the flames crept towards to remaining people trying to find a way to escape the ring of flame, the only object stopping the fire from engulfing the remaining survivors was the colossal tree. All everyone taking cover could do was hope that the fire was going to get miraculously put out and the tree would stand as a heat shield for long enough until that miracle happens. Like John, his wife, kids, and a couple of other people. The tree was extremely thick, due to years of care John had put into it.
“Drip. Splash,” John snapped back to reality. He just had flashbacks to the scene of the fire 1 year ago. As the rain slowly started to drip down, he saw the worried faces of his family looking at him. As he recollected his previous thoughts and pulled himself together and stared at the remains of the once huge tree menacingly looming tall over the landscape. As the rain continued to fall onto the shoreline the scarred and burnt tree stood alone in the middle of the land. “You should stop coming here every day, you’re only hurting yourself,” said his wife. “The tree is already burnt down and the land here is extremely dry.” John finally agreed as if parting with the dead tree was like parting with a family member forever.
John trying to forget about his trauma with the bushfire stopped looking after the now dead and burnt tree. As time went on the landscape became very dry and the tree became no more than a little tree stump near the shoreline.
