From the Field Notes of Colonel Aubrey Fitch-Harrington, FRS

Observations Upon the Fauna of Southern Africa — Volume III (In Preparation)

“The Leadwood (Combretum imberbe) is the hardest wood in Southern Africa — denser than water, it sinks rather than floats. A live leadwood grows slowly. A dead leadwood stands for five hundred years before it falls. When it falls, it lies for five hundred years before it decomposes. The wood is so dense that decomposition requires what most living things cannot match in patience. The author has been using the same dead leadwood as a windbreak at his camp for six seasons. The dead tree was standing when his grandfather was born. It will be standing when the author is not. He writes this without elaboration because it does not require elaboration.”

He had been using it as a windbreak for six seasons.

The same dead leadwood, the same camp, the same position relative to the prevailing evening wind. He had never looked at it specifically. It had been background: the grey-silver of old dead wood, bare branches, a presence, a useful windbreak that had been there when he first established the camp and would be there if he returned in twenty years, as it had been there before he arrived and would be there after.

He pressed his hand against it.

The wood did not give. He pushed harder. Nothing. The specific hardness of something denser than water, the specific quality of a material that had been constructing itself for the entire lifespan of the tree and had kept constructing after the tree died, holding the structure without the life.

“How long,” he said.

“Dead?” Cetshwayo looked at the leadwood. “Long. Before your father’s father.”

“And it will —”

“Stand for longer than you will know.”

The Colonel sat with this. The tree had died before his grandfather was born and was still standing. It would be standing when the Colonel was not. It would fall eventually — perhaps in another century — and then it would lie for five hundred years decomposing at a pace that suited wood of this density.

He wrote: The leadwood has been my windbreak for six seasons. It was dead before my grandfather was born. It will be standing after I am not. The wood is denser than water. It takes what the living tree was and holds it without diminishment for a thousand years. The author has been calling it the dead tree for six seasons. He notes that dead is the wrong word for something that will outlast him by eight hundred years. He notes further that he does not have a better word and will look for one.

He looked for one. He sat at the camp table and turned the pages of his field notes and considered the available words. Standing was accurate but descriptive rather than explanatory. Preserved was better but implied an external agent doing the preserving, when the leadwood preserved itself by being what it was. Enduring was close. Continuing was close. Neither was the word.

The problem was that every word he knew for something that was not alive and was not decaying had been designed for a shorter interval. Wood that lasted six seasons. Stone that outlasted buildings. These were the durations human language had been built around. The leadwood's duration was different in kind, not degree. A thousand years of holding what the tree had been required a word the author did not have.

"What do your people call it," he said to Cetshwayo. "When a leadwood has been standing dead for longer than anyone knows."

Cetshwayo thought about this for a moment. Then he said a word in his language that the Colonel could not transcribe but which sounded, in the Colonel's imperfect assessment, like something between standing and still.

"What does it mean," the Colonel said.