The Caged Tree
I come across so many of your type doing conservation volunteering. You are of various ages, generally young- though once there was a group of you quite old and forgotten. I am drawn to all of you. I see our past, present, and our potential futures entwined. So now, I kneel in front of you with a knife in hand, prepared to do to you what should have been done years ago. Dear tree, I am here to free you from your cage.
I was made to wear a cage once. In cancer treatment there are various levels of terribleness the body must go through- surgery, bone marrow biopsy, chemotherapy, radiation. For me, radiation remains the most bizarre torture I went through in the name of healing. This was where I received my cage.
The radiation mask is a hard piece of grided plastic that is moulded to your exact face as it hardens. The mask is then used during radiation treatments to restrict movement and ensure precision. At each session, the mask is placed on your face and screwed into the table. I would become stuck in a cage, unable to move from the waist up.
It was the same for you too, wasn’t it? Someone came up and placed a cage around your body. They tied you to it. It was done in the name of good like my cage was. Both our cages were to make us healthier, stronger, to continue living. For me, cancer treatment and conservation work share this similar mission- fixing the ecosystem: my body, your forest. But there are traumas associated with both, even if a life is protected.
Dear tree, I wonder if you show your traumas. Is your cage just as unbearable as mine was? I only had to be bolted in for merely minutes while a machine whirled above, sending invisible waves to permeate my rogue cells. I often got panicky at the thought of not being able to get released from this cage. What if the radiation door got stuck and the technicians could not get back in? The reliance on someone else to free me. You had to wait years for someone to remember your mask was stuck as you stood still through the seasons. How restricted you must have felt! How unbearable!
Dear tree, I have come to cut you out of your cage today. Like my own mask, I do not know where this used cage will be sent- its job having been made complete, its form moulded to your structure. It is perhaps of no use to anyone else.
As I cut zip ties and run the knife down to tear the plastic tube away, I can see the imprint of the mask starting at the line of moisture running down your trunk, ending with bunched up dead grasses stuck to your trunk. I remember after my cage was removed, I would sit in the dressing room of the hospital and rub my face to try to remove the imprinted grid lines. So, I wipe away the dead grasses imprinted with the grid of your cage that has begun mouldering your bark. I touch the base of my hairline and play with the hair that remains thin in the spot where I had radiation. It reminds me of your limp branch that hangs by your side, forever stunted from starting its growth under the cage. You are free from your cage. Free to sway, free to grow. It can be hard to adapt to life after the cage. I hope you will be ok.
