They have been walking since the dawn. Under the tall beeches, the light flows in pale sheets. The trail, fringed with moss, plunges into a forest where the silence has something pensive, almost religious. Léa is a researcher in plant ecophysiology. Tom is a biotherapist. He dreams of a forgotten age where thought was one with life.
Are they married? Are they lovers? The story doesn’t say so. But no one knows what can happen. They are very close, in any case.
Léa and Tom took a gap year. They left the city for a year. They have one common goal:
Understand what the trees say.
Everyone with their tools, they want to take the path traced by Ernst Zürcher and Xavier Séguinyou are on his website:
Marry measurement with wonder, the microscope with silent prayer.
They settled in the heart of the large forest, in a raw wood cabin. Every morning, Léa measures the photosynthesis of an old oak tree. She notes: “Stable sap rate. Consistent light response. But the tree seems more awake at dawn.”
Tom read over his shoulder. He laughs softly.
— Your oak ‘seems awake’… As if it had dreams in its sleep.
— I know, Tom… It sounds crazy. But the flow changes at dawn. Something moves differently just before sunrise.
— You approach the forest of symbols.
Léa doesn’t like this irony, nor this tone of a poet. She chose rigor. Measure, note. The weeks pass and his readings reveal strange rhythms, variations that coincide neither with the temperature nor with direct light. Inexplicable cycles. She remembers a passage from Zürcher:
Trees live in cosmic, solar, lunar, and stellar rhythms.
Their biology does not stop at the roots; it participates in the great movement of the world.
For the first time, it is no longer a romantic hypothesis. Léa sees in it a tangible track.
“The tree says nothing, but it thinks slowly. It doesn’t choose, it tilts. It doesn’t decide, it perseveres. He has no morals, but a righteousness.”
Tom spends hours sitting at the foot of the fir trees, without moving, in what he calls the discipline of the immobile. He does not really meditate, he listens. The human mind, too talkative, must purify itself to become porous, in order to perceive what does not speak in words.
— Come on! For you, is the tree a wise one? ironise Léa.
— Yes, replies Tom. I believe he is. His reason is not ours. He does not think. He feels. He changes with perfect slowness.
— And I am trying to prove that he reacts to the moon. We will eventually meet, you and me.
— No, Léa. We will end up keeping quiet together. That’s when we’ll meet.
The forest expands in green vigour, almost insolent. Léa arranged sensors around three beeches: every two hours, day and night, she records the rising of sap. Tom helps him, silent, carrying the material with a kind of bow. The first full night of observation, they sleep under a translucent tarp, a few meters from the trees. The wind is gentle, the moon shaves the peaks.
Around two o’clock, Léa wakes up: the needles of her instruments vibrate weakly. She lights her lamp: the flow increases, as if the tree was pumping the very light of the moon.
She wakes up Tom who whispers:
— He drinks the clarity of the sky.
— Are you joking again?
— No, Léa. You, you measure. Me, I listen to what it means.
The next day, Léa cross-references the data. The correlation is there. It’s not yet proof, but it’s a sign. Without her knowing why, this sign floods him with a child’s joy.
Summer is settling in. The birds disappear into the full foliage. The two friends live in hermits: bread, fruits, rare vegetables, many readings. Their common language is revealing: they talk about vibration, rhythm, presence.
— Xavier Séguin tells that each tree has a function, its personality, says Tom. Some are warriors, others healers.
— And do you believe in it?
— It’s not about believing, but checking. Look at this one.
Tom shows a large black fir at the edge of the ravine.
— Every time I sit next to him, I feel a column of energy within me. He straightens my thoughts. What if he were a guardian?
Léa observes the same trunk, its smooth bark, the perfect symmetry of the branches. Then she says:
— Or an antenna. A living organism connects the earth and the air through its electrical, hydraulic energy.
— Everyone has their own alphabet. In fact, we see the same thing.
That evening, everyone will note:
“The tree translates our two languages. It hears the one who measures, like the one who contemplates.”
At the end of the summer, Léa analyzes the roots, the underground network. The mycelium, this white mesh that connects the trees together.
— Do you see chemical communication? The trees exchange sugars, water, signals. They help each other, they warn each other.
— Like a silent fraternity, says Tom, thoughtful.
— Exactly. It’s an articulate, wordless language, but more faithful than ours.
Tom watches for a long time the filaments on the screen.
— Ancient forests are families. Roots are their joined hands.
— And here I thought science killed poetry.
— No, Léa. She gives it a body. That’s what Zürcher was looking for: a bridge between the two.
Léa doesn’t answer anything. She sees this bridge between the two. A bridge that unites them, her and him.
The storm hit the valley. The cabin trembles, the torrent swells. One night, a flash hits the large black pine. The tree is burning, splitting from top to bottom. A rainstorm extinguishes it in time. Tom wants to approach it. Léa hesitates.
— It is still charged with electricity.
The split pine oozes resin. The air smells like ash and mixed sap.
— He took the lightning for us, said Tom. He protected us. He’s a warrior.
Or a guardian, she thinks. For several days, she returns to see the pine tree. The blackened trunk bursts, life refuses to abdicate. The vital streams are very active.
“Science explains the phenomenon, but the tree testifies to something else,” she will write. A will, or an instinct of light.
Tom murmurs:
— You start speaking their language.
They stay like this for a long time, on their knees on the damp earth. No rite except gratitude. In the distance, the jays shout as if to greet them.
“Every tree is a temple whose columns breathe,” writes Léa. It’s still Zürcher.
Winter is long. The forest sleeps under the ice. The trees, bare, show their structures like the skeletons of cathedrals. Tom starts writing his essay entitled The Intelligence of Trees. Léa, on her side, puts her graphs in order.
Under the moon, the snow is crispy. They keep quiet. Tom murmurs:
— Do you hear?
— Nothing.
— That’s exactly it. Their language is silence. And yet, there is an answer.
— I think I understand Xavier Séguin, answers Léa. It’s not about believing, but feeling. Then everything becomes sign.
— Attention is also the Zürcher method.
Spring returns. Léa and Tom decide to leave the cabin at the equinox, one year to the day after their arrival. The oak in the torrent has grown, the moss has changed color. Before leaving, they engrave on a piece of bark:
Visible and invisible are only one trunk.
Léa puts away her instruments, Tom closes his notebooks. They hold hands for a moment in front of the big tree.
— We came to understand, Léa. Now, we are leaving again to act.
— Yes, my Tom. To act without forgetting to amaze us.
The wind passes through the branches, carries away a little snow, a little pollen. The song of the roots moves away like a breath.
The following year, they publish their joint results. The article is a bridge. It proposes. He aligns equations and poems, lunar flow charts and vibrating thoughts.
“The forest doesn’t speak: it remembers.”
Some scientists giggle. Others see it as an opening. But Léa and Tom are already far away. They live together in their little house perched on the edge of another valley.
Every morning, Léa measures the dew, Tom breathes in the forest. Then they go talk to the young coudrier that they planted together. Sometimes, when the wind passes through its leaves, a fraternal voice murmurs to them:
“Thank you my friends. Thank you for listening to me.”
The civilization of the Indus Valley extended its empire to the ancient Sri Lanka.
Discover how your raw perceptions are dressed and distorted to make them presentable
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Anna, the Blessed Virgin and Mother Goddess, has lived so long she has no age.
It’s admirable what you do. You allow me to advance the gigantic puzzle of Eden…