The Spirit of the Forest

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21562, 5 August 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Spirit of the Forest

By ELSIE "WARING, D.D.M.8.G., ase 17, Great South Road, Mahuxewa. (Original.) The spirit of the forest sobbed plaintively in the evening breeze. She had floated for hours over rolling green paddocks, dotted here and there with blackened stumps. Every year she made this journey in the early spring, when buds were bursting and the bush was very green. Every year she pleaded with the tree-spoilers to cease their destruction, and every year the journey from her home was lengthened as the bush was steadily cleared. As she journeyed she touched each desolate stump with tender fingers, as if to heal those dark, cruel scars and to ease the pain of each dying tree. The sun was setting full and fiery behind the blue, misty hills, when the breeze, reaching the farm house, played softly round the figure of the old farmer. It ruffled the thinning grey hair on the old man's head and sent the smoke from his pipe curling aloft in fantastic rings. His face was turned toward the sunset and his eyes were fixed on those distant hills; those gallant trees. Was it admiration for their beauty or gladness in the fact that they were his to fell, that shone from his eyes? The spirit paused beside him hopefully, but sadly continued her way, when he spoke aloud, " Wonderful trees —a hundred pound# apiece. Wealth for the cutting, and all mine!" As night foil, with sorrowful heart, the forest dweller reached the city. The smoke from a hundred chimneys darkened the air; a thick fog hid the water, and the lights looked hard and cold to the sorrowful spirit. The littlo breeze sighed round the house-top 3 and warehouses, and moved the fog in thick, sullen banks. " Will you please," asked the forest guardian timidly, " take mo to the timber merchant's?" The breeze gave a gay little whirl and carried his little country companion merrily down the street. The weary town people raised their tired faces gratefully, as the swift rush of wind cooled their perplexed brows. In the timber yard the boards creaked a welcome. Even they, although so changed, felt her presence and rejoiced. " Save the trees," the spirit whispered in the manager's car, but he unheeding signed a contract for the cutting of another thousand. Grieving, she left him, and passed a .sorrowful night among the protected i strangers in 'the city parks. Next morning, when the sun rofee in its splendour, clothing the city in glory, she started homo, her plea unanswered, her petitions refused. As she passed over the outskirts of the city she looked down and saw a child busily patting the soil round a young rimu tree. She flew nearer, and read with joyful heart, " My Herald Birthday Tree." She rose again. " Someone still cares," she sang, and as she passed over gardens, orchards and great open spaces, saw many boys and girls watering, watching and measuring those tender, green baby troes. How her heart rejoiced. Joyfully she sought the shade of her beloved trees, and as she caressed their gnarled trunks and ruffled the tiny ferns in the shelter of their kindly roots, she sang triumphantly, " The bush will bo eternal if children care, and raise now trees for other generations."