Danger Trees

What a Douglas fir does, it does very slowly, and that includes dying. Possibly the least attractive feature of a nine-hundred-year life span is the century or two spent dying. Decomposition drags on for another hundred years or so. A tree is the rare organism to which the comparative deader is often and accurately applied. A recently dead, or “dead hard,” conifer progresses to “dead spongy,” then “dead soft,” limbs and top rotting and dropping off, until the last piece of standing trunk topples and the tree enters the final classification, “dead fallen.” At some point in its protracted twilight, a tree that stands near a road or path or building may earn a new classification: “danger tree.” Because if it falls, anyone it lands on will spend a very, very short time dying.