The earth is never the same after winter. The season briefly seals the landscape, holding it in suspension, but only at the cost of a greater transformation with the coming of spring.
As frozen ground thaws, the ice beneath melts, and the earth sinks to fill the spaces created. But this process is not consistent: the quantities of ice, and the speed of the melt, will vary, with the result that a previously flat surface may become pitted and uneven over the years, its weaknesses waiting to be exposed.
The spruce was among the oldest in the copse. It was only to be expected that it should someday fall, or so it would later be said, as though the imminent revelation were entirely in the natural order of things.
Not everyone would concur with this view. The tree, whispered those who knew of such matters, was not so old, and the slope upon which it stood remained relatively stable. There was subsidence, but not so much that it should have caused the spruce’s hold upon the earth to be so fatally undermined, and certainly not so abruptly, with the thaw barely commenced.
But fall the tree did, and as it fell the rain eased, descending more gently now, the very heavens complicit in what was about to occur.