Smoldering silently, this forest was bleeding with tears. Only the parched branches, specks, and the vestiges of charcoal on the trees left the evidence of the cataclysm which had just happened in this shattered place. The thick black smoke fuming from the remains of lives was the only thing given by the devil. All of these traces hinted that the evil had just gone, leaving the desolation behind…. Although I saw this devastating scene in a television channel when I was only five, it had never faded in my mind. This catastrophe, to my surprise, was caused not by the others but the humans. They arrived as the storm, raging and roaring, sweeping away both the life and the death. There could have long been habitats settled in, villages established nearby, and life existed.  But all of these, all of these precious treasures, were once annihilated by the burgeoning avarice of men, the scourge of humankind. 

Some people were always wanting. They can never be satisfied, especially in the respect of wealth. Some of them spent their full lifetime savaging for it, and as soon as they started chasing it, they could never stop. The avarice seemed to be inborn in people’s heart, prompting them to move from the heaven to the earth to obtain things that were valuable. They could sacrifice anything willingly as long as it allowed them to become richer, including the life on this planet. While those people’s eyes were deceived by the lure of wealth, their worlds remained nothing but their own interests. No more ethical rules, frames of value, or the basic principles of humanity could ever bound them. They were promoted by their primal desires, which accelerated them to be self-interested. It was difficult to imagine how people could be controlled by the greed, making their hearts to become hybrid; it was a denigration toward the dignity of all human beings, an insult of the humankind. But the truth was that there had been manifold incidents caused by the overarching power of avarice in the past few years, and obviously this forest fire would not be the last. 

There were many factors that might urge people to ignite or undermine the forest: sacrifices, logging, poaching… yet all of them were related to the factor of wealth. The forest was a fertile resource given by the mother of nature. It cultivated agrarian plants with nutrients which helped people survive; nonetheless, humans always wanted more than they could afford. They tried to gain all what they wanted to get. Subsequently, the consequence always ended in a stalemate with loses in all sides. 

When I was young, I remembered hearing suspects talking about that fire. Their grandiloquent wording characterized how sorrowful they were toward people who were injured, but that was all. In fact, no one seemed to care about the habitats which were damaged desperately, the vegetation that were killed, nor the living things that lost their home eternally. People deemed that these things they neglected couldn’t talk, be heard, nor have feelings. Hence, they might feel no guilty about making this happened as long as they themselves were not harmed. How could they be so indifferent? 

They must have not seen this forest with vigorousness. Stroking across the ground with warmth, the spring was the one who came first to wake the forest up from its dream. Dyed with green by this talent painter, vegetations were soon settled in their new house covering with nutrients and soil. They waited there for a whole season, growing and raising silently in bed; while the summer arrived, they were already courageous enough to break out of the sheltered door to confront the wind and storms. They were teenagers who aspired to get to know this world. Thriving continuously, they made friends with the locals and heard them telling folk tales which brought the outside world into this tranquil forest. They were told that there was a mysterious type of primate called humans, who seldom could be seen, living and dominating this world. They were told that they belonged to these humans. They were curious and expected to get to know these new friends who soon were founded to live nearby, in tribes, at the bottom of the hill. They saw humans coming to the well to pump the water out sometimes; when the water was floating out of the bucket, reflected in sun irradiating rays of lights, the forest was charmed. The water coming out composed a melodious piece of music, with each drop representing a delicate pitch. This musical piece reverberated in this forest, bringing peace and joy to this temperate zone, enabling these vegetations to eventually become mature. Thereafter, the autumn came in a hustle, turning the greenery into red leaves in a flush. It was a season for harvest, an ending for their lives as well. They had been imagining once a while about in what ways their lives would be ended; the autumn came and told them finally. If that fire didn’t happen, they should have gone willingly; they should have been able to be made into culinary palatable food as what they had been told for those gourmets who lived down the hill; they should have been able to bring happiness to people, as what they had brought to them, no matter they were plebeian or aristocrats; there should have been more time remained for them to sow the seeds of their offspring; there should have been hope and life left after they were gone. Nevertheless, their hopes were like bubbles, too weak and common to be realized; these suspects, people who ignited the fire, were ones who pricked and made them burst. So as the winter came, it was greeted only with desolation and solitude remained in this place. The life there was taken away by those people, who must have not seen the vigorousness that there used to have. They made off with lives that used to belong to this forest and to people who lived nearby, without giving even a glimpse at those victimizers who were tearing; the eternal hurt left on them could never be cured by any panacea. 

It might take years for these suspects to get to realize that this place, the forest, could talk, could think, and had feelings; it might take another period of life for this forest, for the life lived in and around, to be truly heard.