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The tree had
grown from a sapling in the savannah of Northern Ghana, surrounded by small
shrubs and, at a distance, by other trees. Throughout its lifetime, it had
absorbed water from the ground, water which had fallen each rainy season
and dissolved metal salts as it soaked through the soil. By the miracle
of photosynthesis, the tree had also gathered carbon dioxide from the air
and combined it with the moisture from the ground and the metal salts to
make wood, bark, leaves - more and more tree-stuff as it grew larger and
reached for the sky against the competition from all the other plantlife
around it.
As I looked at it, most of the tree had gone, changed entirely and gone.
It had caught fire, maybe from a lightning strike, possibly set on fire
by poachers making camp. It had then smouldered away, the carbon in its
various tree-stuffs changing back to carbon dioxide and escaping into the
air. The metals which had formed a small part of the stuff of the tree,
now lay on the ground as white oxides, showing the shape of the trunk and
large branches rather like a huge photograph invented by nature.
When the rains came, the ash would be washed down into the earth, to be
absorbed by other plantlife. The carbon dioxide in the air would be re-organised
by other plants into new shapes and structures. Such is the nature of life
on earth, and as I looked at the ash on the ground, I pondered on our part
in it.