PHOTOS: A Wrapping Paper Forest

A post-holiday fantasy

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Wrapping Paper Forest photo illustration #1
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Wrapping Paper Forest photo illustration #1

Far, far away from here there is a hectic city.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Wrapping Paper Forest photo illustration #2

At least once or twice a week, everyone who lives there gets a headache from the stress of so much striving. They have to lie down until the headache goes away.

At any given moment, chances are, somebody needs a nap.

The rest of the time, they're very busy. They have to:

• Upgrade to a new smartphone.

• Play Pokemon Go in the middle of the street at rush hour.

• Use the smartphone to buy a virtual-reality head-box and the game Batman Arkham VR.

• Buy the right size batteries.

• Lie down until their headaches go away.

That would be a quiet day for the cityfolkers. Other days they have to buy a new CD boxed set pointy shoes Wi-Fi talking bear non-GMO chocolate bar and also to wheel their city-assigned big green trash can full of empty pizza boxes out to the curb.

And this is besides cleaning the closet, going to the office, gassing up the car, teaching people to do their own taxes and, in the summer, mowing the lawns.

The city's busiest man is the trash collector, who has to do all of that and also make trash rounds, day after day. He visits each house once a week on a changing schedule that is announced every so often in the city newspaper.

But who has time to read that? The busy cityfolkers are never quite certain which day is their assigned trash-collection day, and so they leave their big green cans out by the curb all week. It's comical to see them dart in their nighties out of their homes just after sunup and scamper barefoot over the frosty grass to get last night's pizza boxes into the can early, in case it's trash day.

They also, sometimes, set out small brown recycling boxes beside the green cans; but mostly those are empty, upside down and behind the house where they're useful for covering the water spigot in freezing weather.

But these are kind people who value one another and want to live in a happy world.

And so once a year, in the winter, they plan a big day of togetherness. They call it The Festival, and it is a day for singing in unison, holding hands, decorating the staircase and -- especially -- giving gifts to the ones they love best.

Cityfolkers strive to buy special wonderful new better inventions to delight the ones they love. They wrap each gift carefully in the most colorful and festive wrapping paper and beribbon the packages. The packages are beyond pretty.

But the extra effort does bring on headaches.

They are good people, these cityfolkers. They will suffer a headache to ensure that their families feel loved.

...

Far, far from the city is a forest where no one goes except foresters and the occasional news reporter, lost dog or very boring expert.

What a shame this is, because the forest is magical. Simply scuffing around for 15 minutes or sitting like a lump on a fallen log for five is as restorative there as taking an hour-long nap in the city.

Foresters do hard work there, felling trees. They cull pines for ordinary wood pulp and oaks to make furniture and ash trees to make baseball bats and, once a year just before The Festival, they down a few of the forest's magnificent rainbow-colored wrapping-paper trees.

Wrapping-paper trees once were found throughout all mixed-wood, upland forests, but that was long ago. Today only one sizable stand of old-growth "wrappers" remains, and it's in the faraway forest.

Spending so much time around these pretty trees calms foresters' minds so they tend to keep things in perspective. (Cityfolkers joke that they're all a bit plodding.) They approach their work with prudence and a sense of stewardship. Before they fell any tree, they do two pages of arithmetic about it, making sure the tree will land safely and its parts won't go to waste.

"Do the people need this tree?" they ask.

"Yes, we do," they reply.

Then two foresters at a time take up a two-handled, 12-foot, "misery whip" crosscut saw, and they sing as they make quick work of a thick trunk.

The shimmery leaves of the great wrapper shiver as the trunk creaks before it crashes down. The cut ends of each felled tree reveal their growth rings of brilliant red, green, gold and white.

From these trees come the papers the cityfolkers like best for wrapping up their Festival gifts.

...

In the city, a little girl lives with her grumpy grandfather in a neighborhood where people can't figure out which day is trash-collection day. Except at Grampa's house. Grampa is a retired trash collector. His can stands at the curb only on trash day.

"Dummies," says Grampa, frowning at his neighborhood.

Grampa has bony hands and a soft belly. He's a cookie baker, but he folds the ends of his bedsheets in hospital quarters and can bounce a quarter off the middle of his bed. He refuses to unmake that bed during the day, so he never naps.

"Naps are for sissies," he says.

He taught the little girl to read the newspaper.

One day, she read something unsettling. A strange infestation of multicolored borers had invaded the faraway forest. These insects were only eating the wrapping-paper trees.

The foresters still planned to fell enough of the trees to supply the cityfolkers' Festival, but they wanted everyone to save those papers to reuse next year, just in case.

"In case what?" the girl asked.

"In case the wrapping-paper trees all die," Grampa said.

The girl took this as bad news. She went door to door to warn the neighbors to save their wrapping papers for next year. But most of them were lying down because of their headaches or they were wearing their virtual reality head-boxes and immersed in the Batman game world. They didn't hear her small hand knocking.

When The Festival came, they ripped open their packages as usual and stuffed the big green cans with splendid shreds and scraps.

...

Grampa called the newspaper to ask if there was anything he could do to save the trees. The reporter was stumped, but she suggested he call the boring expert.

That guy was a very boring expert, but Grampa had so much determination he was able to stay awake throughout their conversation, and when he hung up, he had a plan.

"The trees are doomed," he told the little girl. "But that incredibly boring smart guy thinks some of their nuts are in the forest floor and might sprout in the spring. But we need to hide them so the bugs will leave."

Grampa and the little girl went door to door for permission to gather the scraps from the neighbors' trash cans, and when Grampa's bony fist hammered on their doors, they heard.

Grampa ran the colorful scraps through his shredder and bundled up great bags of wrapping-paper mulch to take to the faraway forest.

...

Sad-faced foresters led the little girl and Grampa to the last stand of the wrapping-paper trees.

Streams of red, green, gold and white sap streaked the doomed trunks like bright stripes. Leaves whispered and shivered in a breeze created by the multicolored insect vortex that swirled around each tree.

It was almost too beautiful to bear.

Grampa, who knew a thing or two about authority figures, recognized their leader as it fluttered past.

"Hey you," he said.

The king of the borers hovered in midair.

"You need these trees to live," Grampa said. "Why are you killing them?"

The bug king's tiny crown twinkled as it answered, but they couldn't understand its tinny, tiny voice. And then it flew away.

...

So the last of the wrapping-paper trees died. With nothing to eat, the multicolored borers left, and the very boring expert, whose job it was to study them, lost his job.

And the next year, as feared, the cityfolkers had no lovely colored paper to wrap their presents in. They had to use newspaper. Newspaper and fat red yarn.

The Festival was a little less pretty, but as Grampa put it, "it's the thought that counts. Dummies."

And there was an upside.

While using it to wrap their presents, the people stopped and read the newspaper. They read about the plight of the jobless boring expert and crowd-sourced funding to hire him to search in the forest for any little seedlings that might sprout beneath that mulch.

Also, he is working on a listening device that will allow foresters to negotiate should the tiny king's multicolored species return -- or figure out how to scare it away.

The neighbors also read the little stories announcing the trash collector's schedule, and although the recycling bins are piled high now with newspapers, the neighborhood no longer looks like it's trash day every day.

Most people still rush around too much and need to take more naps, but then who doesn't?

THE END

ActiveStyle on 12/26/2016

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