Saturday, May 13, 2017

The forest is on fire!

Call it a natural process, a cycle of life and death of eliminating the unfit and saving the fittest; call it regeneration, but the forest will never be the same again.

Dr Abe V Rotor
Forest on Fire in acrylic by AV Rotor 2015 

Summer is the time of forest fire when the trees lose their leaves piling up into thick and dry litter that spontaneously burns at kindling temperature.  

Everything  goes to flame - branches, twigs, annuals, epiphytes, lianas, shrubs and bushes, even compost and organic matter in the soil are not spared.

Heat builds into inferno, the forest becomes a ball of fire, burning both the living and the dead, smoke bellowing far and wide, releasing gases into the air.   

Birds swoop in joy and abandon on fleeing insects, daring to go at the source of fire or tracking those that escaped, even far out in the sky or horizon.

Whole trees fall, branches crack, screeches and cries of the dying are heard, residents of the forest scamper, so with the transients, as the fire moves in. 

Call it a natural process, a cycle of life and death of eliminating the unfit and saving the fittest; call it regeneration, but the forest will never be the same again. ~

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