field note
A bare-tree winter
Mid-winter, year two. The deciduous trees are dormant; the terraces hold their shape; the sun is low and clean.
· Sameer Jain · 1 min read
This tree is older than any tree we planted. We do not know how old it is exactly — old enough that the village remembers picking fruit off it when they were children, which is enough.
A walnut or stone-fruit tree on this hillside spends three months of the year looking dead. That is not a problem. The bare months are when the roots do their work — the soil microbes are still active in the colder hours, the mulch is breaking down, and the tree is laying down the carbon it will need to push leaves out in March.
We used to think a sleeping tree was a wasted month. It is the opposite. The trees that don't sleep are the trees that don't fruit.
There is a Garhwali word, sushupta, that means "asleep but alive" — used by farmers about trees in February. The trees are working in the dark.