ROSEWOOD

 

        In this place there is no place as we begin, just the great ocean swirling below us as we float like angels on air and drift outside of time, before there is time (although some people say this is not possible) and before there are people (although some people deny there was such a time). We can watch and witness as one small grain of sand, long before formed from broken mountains a thousand miles from this place and moved here by water over time and miles, falls from the edge of the continent into the water and then another falls, onto the great reefs made by ocean creatures over thousands of years. Joined by more grains of sand and the microscopic bodies of dead ocean creatures, a ridge is formed from the sand and shells that rises from the ocean and then there is land here, and time begins and can be measured in the rock and this place begins.

         Once there is land life soon follows, and soil forms and plant seeds blown by wind and moved by water drift here and fall between grains and root and reach up and this pile of sand becomes covered in life. Ferns and cycads grow and great beasts roam this garden and they leave their young, who grow in this place and fill it with noise and movement and odor and life. Soon the beasts and plants cover the land that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and soon this place is lush and green and covered with every living thing. Flowers grow everywhere and every kind of creature lives here and is born here and dies here.

         Except, there are no people. People do not come here for hundreds of thousands of years (some will deny this) and when they do finally arrive they are few, so few that few creatures take notice. The alligators and the big cats of the swamps notice and find them slow and easy to catch. For much of time these few small humans can be eaten or ignored or simply watched and avoided. Humans find it hard to live in this place. The forest is too thick here. There are too many trees and too many snakes and insects and too many places for alligators and panthers to hide. The humans move on and settle near the coasts, where the breezes blow away the mosquitoes and there are bivalves to eat and there are open spaces where nothing can pounce.

         After some thousands more years new people come, this time in ships from the ocean. The new people push the first people from the safe places, away from the coasts, and they push until the first ones move into the swamps and into the forest with the other creatures who hide and are quiet and leave little mark of their passing, hoping to avoid the predators lurking in the wet dark gloom. The first people become invisible to the new and then become myth, and soon no one is sure when or where the first people first came to this place, and when they left or where they went.

         More time passes and fewer years pass before a new group of people come to this place. Only a few swift hundreds of years pass and one man, rich and restless, who like Prometheus wishes for more and new and novel things, buys the land and builds the path for destruction of this place through the thick plants and swamps and forests. Foot by foot he dooms this place to progress. The creatures who can flee, do, the plants and trees are cut down and dug up as a path of prosperity and civilization moves from the northeast to the west coast, and instead of giant trees and every sort of creature there are railroads and towns and people everywhere to anchor this place in time, time measured by machines and money and people who believe there was no time before them, how could there be a time without people to measure time and hold dominion over all?

         It is only one swift moment from this point in time that we watch until this place will be overrun by swift modern times and machines and modern people. But in this final moment there is one place on the western shore, by a bay full of shallow islands and scrub hammock swamp, one tiny spot not overrun by time, where giant trees cover the land, not for long but still in this one moment. Plants grow thick and green and cover the ground. Creatures still live and grow and people have come here, but not too many yet. There are people here who are happy and love and play and work and die, people who have carved out this place from the surrounding swamp and forest where they go to earn their living. These people go in to the shady deep places to fish, and trap, and hunt, and through great labor trees are pulled from the swamps, and these trees are tall and fragrant and have hearts of dark red wood, wood that is called rosewood for its color and for its fragrance, and this wood is made into chests of drawers and boards for the closets of the prosperous. Rosewood makes the boards and planks of the houses of the fortunate ones who live here, with fragrant walls and floors and sweet smelling suites of furniture for the houses made from these boards, and rosewood is made into shavings for sachets and into pencils for the suffering students of schools everywhere. Rosewood is the reason for this place and Rosewood is the name of this place. Let us pause, from above and outside of time, like angels we can float and marvel at the lives of these people while there is still time to watch quietly and witness before the predators come.