Annual Growth Report
A cedar grove keeps record of a changing world.
The tree rings told more truth than the city’s weather archives ever could.
Ananya stared at the slide projected on the screen—a magnified image of a cedar core’s thin bands, each one whispering of winters long gone. The university called it climate reconstruction. To her, it felt more like performing an autopsy on a dying season.
The rings told stories. Each ring marked another year of forgetting—how snow once sounded tapping against her childhood window. 1937 wasn’t just the year snowpacks began retreating—it was the year her grandfather stopped talking about salmon runs. The year the river stopped returning what it took.
She stood before the committee as both, a scientist and a witness. The data was cold and precise.
“Our findings depict,” she said, steadying herself, “the tree rings showing a dramatic decline in snowpack post-1937, indicating early onset of human-induced climate shifts—”
“Wait, trees said that?” a senator cut in.
Ananya paused. “Technically, yes. The annual ring width—”
“Fantastic. Now the trees have PhDs?”
The aide looked momentarily mortified, then quickly leaned in with practiced tact and murmured to the senator, “It’s called dendrochronology.”
The senator gave a dismissive snort. “Well, that sounds like some kind of tree-worshipping cult.”
Polite laughter followed—thin and rehearsed, a social reflex more than amusement. The hydrologist beside Ananya exhaled softly and closed the slide deck without a word. Ananya felt the heat rise in her face. She glanced at the senator—the smirk, the smug detachment—and wondered if the room was capable of hearing anything that didn’t speak in profits.
Across the country, the salmon failed to spawn. Again. River flow collapsed to a record low, leaving stretches of the spawning grounds dry and silent. Ananya worried they were drifting closer to extinction, like a fable slowly forgotten, leaving only silence where abundance used to be.
The old-growth cedars had been holding the receipts for decades—but no one wanted to see the ledger.
“Thank you, Dr. Menon,” the chair said. “Moving on to item six: Exploring Economic Opportunities in Quebec’s Old-Growth Regions.”
Ananya quietly gathered her notes, stepped down from the podium, and walked out of the chamber—neither rushed nor defiant, just done. She’d learned the decorum of despair.
She drove back to the grove, boots crunching through the brittle undergrowth, and laid her hand on the bark of a 500-year-old cedar. The trunk was narrow, gnarled from centuries of slow, deliberate growth. Undeniably alive.
She looked up at the canopy and let out a breath. It wasn’t the salmon who should fear extinction, she thought. They were just the warning. The real collapse was still upstream.
“We’re the ones going extinct, aren’t we?” she whispered.
The bark stayed silent. Deep inside, the tree tightened itself into another narrow ring.
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