Suddenly a terrific crack rent the stillness of the atmosphere, temporarily freezing us into inaction with the shock of its overwhelming sound. The person with whom we were speaking, when the crack bruised the air around us had a shocked expression on her face. After the crack, a seemingly agonizingly slow series of crashes continued the aural assault. I watched as our companion's instinct to flee kicked in, and she seemed to be trying to determine in which direction to flee.

Both of us, however, seemed to more quickly ascertain from the sounds and where they were emanating from that though close, they presented no immediate danger. Eventually, or so it seemed that way, the crashes came to a stop. I had thought that perhaps there was a crew from the municipality in the forest, taking down trees. We had been discussing the imminent replacement of the bridges in the ravine. After a year during which each of the bridges had been posted with warnings of instability (though we could determine no such thing), it appears that crews will be coming into the ravine in the next little while to decommission the bridges and build replacements. So we were thinking construction crews, when the crack-and-crashes occurred.

When all was still again, we theorized what might have occurred and concluded that natural events had overtaken some vulnerable tree beyond where we stood, up on one of the ravine slopes. It was windy, but not excessively so. We parted with our acquaintance and continued to the conclusion of our daily circuit through the network of trails we usually access on a daily basis.

As we ascended the last long slope, we thought we would continue and make a left-hand turn onto a trail we rarely now take, that runs along the back of the houses on the street where we live and where our house is located on the opposite side. We hadn't gone too far along the trail when we spotted the source of all that when-a-tree-in-the-forest-falls-does-it-make-a-sound if no one is there to hear it?

Down the hillside, below where we stood was the remains of part of an old pine tree. In its agony, the still-living trunk had crashed down upon other trees, lower down on the hill, and taken them with it to eventually become part of the detritus composting itself away on the forest floor, renewing the living environment, generation after generation.  I made my way down the slope closer to where the tree had succumbed to a combination of predation and circumstances. I could see that there was a series of deep holes from the bark to the heartwood, where the tree's structural-integrity had been badly compromised by Pileated woodpeckers harvesting the infestation of grubs and larvae that insects had laid beneath its bark.

It was an old double-masted pine, and one of the masts had simply given way. Leaving a reproachful looking snag about fifteen feet in height, unwilling to accept the fact of its own demise, its torn and shattered top now raw and white, appealing to the sky for justice.