But the next greeting ceremony lasted half a day when five more groups of a few hundred logs each, came bouncing and rolling through the woods from different directions to join the meeting. Their language became so complicated that I knew I’d never learn it in even a lifetime of watching them. All two thousand or so logs spoke at the same time. But to complete even the simplest sentence, about a hundred different movements were going on by separate groups and single couples and individual logs. Though whenever a stop came, it was made by all the logs together. I now felt that this gathering was a convention of the elected representatives of all the white birch groves in this forest and the surrounding ones. When they weren’t just chattering away, all the logs stood in neat long rows before four other logs. Every so often these rows bounced once or twice or five times together to some other kind of movement the four logs were making at the same time. I thought that maybe these logs reset like this from time to time to work out problems that only white birch logs in this area have, such as a special insect blight or animal or human pests. Or perhaps this was one of many similar conventions being held by logs of all the white birch trees in this country or continent on whether to band together to declare war on the logs of another type birch tree. Maybe logs are the ones who start most forest fires — as an act of strategy against nature or war to wipe out every kind of log type but their own. I also felt that as much as I wanted these questions answered and my guesswork checked out, I’d never let on I’d been following them. They might surround and stomp me if they learned I’d been watching them, afraid that any information leak about them could lead to mobs of people raiding the forests to use or sell them as pets. Or to put them in botanical garden cages so that the rest of us, who might not be so fortunate as I was to see them in their natural state, could go gaga and be educated and frightened and amused. These logs might also fear that if their meeting grounds and possible war plans became known, another type of more numerous though less clever log might unite and attack them first, to destroy them as a potential danger to all the world’s logs. That evening every log fell to the ground at the same time and just stayed there, which I remember meant the words “to sleep.” All the logs but three slept in many circles, one within another. In the center of all these circles, like a bull’s eye in a target, two logs slept side by side with a third log lying on top between them. I was tired also from no sleep for two days. I thought I’d doze off and wake up when they did and follow them till I had enough information and understanding about white birch logs to fill a book. The logs were gone when I woke up. Not a trace of them, except for a trail of bouncing and rolling marks leading to me, around me and then to a river, where they must have floated away as a single group. I tried retracing my steps back to the road where I first met the two logs, but was lost. I looked around for a couple of white birch logs to help me find my way out, since they were the only type log I could speak with. But none was around. I did trip over a three-foot-long oak log who was alone. Maybe oak logs speak also, I thought. No oak log ever spoke to me before, though maybe because I never tried speaking with them first. So I looked for another oak log of about the same length and size around, and dragged it over to the first log. “Excuse me,” I said, “but you know how I can get out of this forest?” They stayed there like the kind of logs I had always been used to till a few days ago: not moving, as if they didn’t understand a word I said.
I sat on one. It didn’t move. I rested my head on it and kicked it. Nothing. The other log didn’t even jump up to protect the log I kicked. Maybe oak logs don’t need a second log to speak with. So I carried one away and said when I got it alone: “Listen, I’m sorry for kicking you before. But could you please tell me how to get out of here?” but it didn’t move. Maybe oak logs only speak in threes or fives or nines, instead of twos or ones. And whatever length, girth and bark conditions they are don’t matter. So I rolled over eight more oak logs of various sizes and tried speaking with them in every possible combination and number. I even stood two logs up while seven were resting. And then put one log on top of three logs while four others were standing and one was resting. Then I gathered all the oak logs in the area and piled them on top of one another in layers and threatened to set fire to the forty of them if they didn’t speak. That still didn’t work. One thing I learned in my study of logs is a piece of information most everyone already knows: oak logs don’t speak. Though I can say I’m probably the one person who’s done thorough research on the subject. I even said in front of them “Well, I guess oak logs don’t speak,” and hid behind a bush and watched them for the rest of the day. I thought maybe they had had a big party or war of their own and were exhausted and sleeping it off and for that reason couldn’t speak. But none of them bounced or rolled even once. Maybe all logs but white birch speak without the logs actually moving. Silently and invisibly, like electric waves from each of them meeting and forming into couples or just bouncing, bunking, falling and rolling around together in the air. But rather than try and tune into this silent way of speaking, and maybe starving by then, or gathering even more logs of every size and type in this forest and arranging them in thousands of different combinations till the right one worked for them to speak, I started following the river the white birch logs had gone in. I did stop to write this letter. I wanted to get down on paper my discoveries about white birch logs and the results of my experiments with other logs, before I forgot it all.