On The Phenomenon of the Troot

Field Observations, Methodological Developments, and a Series of Increasingly Regrettable Decisions

(I painted this in Procreate using the oil paint brush, while the song was created on Suno using my poetry and relentless obsession with waltz’s - Chaiga T. Cheska)

(Verse 1)
The old tree hums on the hillside bend,
Swaying slow for an absent friend.
Leaves recall what the roots once knew-
Storms long gone, and the morning dew.

(Chorus) 
Whirl and sway, the Troot begins,
Branches whisper on the rising winds.
Round we go in the forest’s tune,
A waltz of roots beneath the moon.

(Verse 2)
Down in the dell where the birches lean, 
Five old trunks trade woodland scenes.
Rustles flicker like whispered news -
Who passed by, and what they’ll choose.

(Chorus)
Whirl and sway, the Troot begins,
Branches whisper on the rising winds.
Round we go in the forest’s tune,
A waltz of roots beneath the moon.

(Verse 3) 
The little wood holds a steady beat,
Roots in council beneath our feet.
Canopy dips in a measured line,
Voting softly on soil and sign.

(Chorus)
Whirl and sway, the Troot begins,
Branches whisper on the rising winds.
Round we go in the forest’s tune,
A waltz of roots beneath the moon.

(Verse 4)  
Then the vast green halls awake,
Every bough in a sweeping shake.
Shadow and light in a rolling tide,
The ancient Troot in its full-voiced stride.

(Final Chorus) 
Whirl and sway, the Troot begins,
Branches whisper on the rising winds.
Round we go in the forest’s tune,
A waltz of roots beneath the moon.

On the Nature of the Troot

by Professor Oswin Tench,
Chair of Living Systems and Vegetal Intelligence,
Fallowmere Institute of Natural Inquiry

Submitted in full to Professor Halvard Dreech, Head of Department, in accordance with his requirement for "a complete and unedited account of all fieldwork activities." This requirement was introduced specifically in response to my previous report, from which he suspected I had omitted material. He was correct. I have not omitted anything from this account, having concluded that Tobeth Crawe, my research assistant, has already spoken to four people in the faculty common room, and the situation is therefore beyond managing.

The Troot is the congress of trees: a gathering of vegetal intelligence conducted not in words but in the slow, deliberate language of root tension, bough angle, leaf shiver, and the deep, considered sway of a trunk that has been forming its thought for the better part of a morning. It is also, I am now in a position to confirm with considerable personal authority, entirely unwilling to be witnessed by scholars. Whether this applies to all scholars or only to me specifically, I cannot yet determine. I have my suspicions, but they are not the sort one commits to an academic paper.

The mechanisms are species-specific and worth establishing before I proceed to the fieldwork. Birches are fast. Their communication arrives in quick, repeated leaf-flickers, like someone with strong views who cannot wait to express them. Ash trees are constitutionally nosy, orienting their branches toward whoever is speaking in the manner of a dinner guest leaning sideways across the table to intercept a conversation they were not invited to join. Hawthorns are deeply opinionated and communicate in sharp, emphatic jerks that suggest they disagree with the previous speaker and would like the record to reflect this. Oaks are immovably slow. You could plant a sapling, wait for it to mature, and still not have missed the oak’s contribution. Yews do not so much participate in a Troot as adjourn one. They move rarely, and with the absolute confidence of something that has been alive since before the concept of argument was invented.

Three observational conditions are reliable indicators. When the wind blows from the east and the canopy sways west, a Troot is in progress. When the air is perfectly still, and the canopy is moving regardless, a Troot is in progress, and the participants have dispensed with pretence. When the wind and the trees are moving in opposite directions simultaneously, something of genuine importance is being discussed, and the forest has stopped caring whether you notice. These conditions are verifiable, repeatable, and noted in folklore accounts going back several centuries. They are also, in my experience, very difficult to observe without the trees becoming aware of you and stopping.

First Observations: The Robin Incident

My initial attempts were conventional. I selected a site at the margin of Ordith Wood where a cluster of silver birches had been reported to move in perfectly still air, their leaves flickering in those quick, conspiratorial bursts that local folklore associates with a gossiping cluster: an informal Troot concerned with local news, nearby wildlife, and the general opinions of neighbouring trees. I arrived before dawn, positioned myself behind a fallen beech log some thirty yards distant, and waited.

At half past seven, a light breeze moved through the wood. The birches stirred. I leaned forward, pencil raised.

The birches went completely still.

I leaned back. They resumed. I leaned forward. They stopped. I repeated this eleven times. The results were consistent to a degree that would have been impressive in a controlled experiment. I have recorded all eleven iterations in Appendix C, where they constitute the first rigorous empirical demonstration that the Ordith birch cluster is entirely aware of when a scholar leans towards it and responds to this awareness by ceasing any activity of interest. This is a significant finding. It is not the finding I had hoped for.

On the second morning, I had been still for nearly twenty minutes when a robin landed on my head. It sat there for a moment, regarding the birch cluster with one bright eye. The cluster regarded it in return. The robin departed. The birches went still.

Local wildlife is, it appears, in active communication with local flora and has decided, on balance, not to assist me. I raised this possibility in a letter to Dr. Margeth Waine of the Avian-Arboreal Interface Programme at the Crossvale Academy. She replied that my hypothesis was “not without interest” and hoped the robin had not been inconvenienced. I found this response unhelpful.

The First Disguise: Hessian and the Question of Bark Adhesive

My research assistant, Tobeth Crawe, suggested that the trees might be responding to something fundamental about the human silhouette, which they had been observing for long enough to have formed firm opinions about. Alter the silhouette sufficiently, and I might pass unremarked. This was, in principle, sound.

The first disguise was modest. Six yards of hessian sacking in a brown I considered sympathetically bark-coloured, wrapped to break up the vertical outline of a person, with dried bracken, lichen, and small branches attached using a pine resin adhesive whose market-stall vendor assured me it was suitable for “all natural materials.” This was accurate. It was perhaps too accurate. By the time I reached the wood, the bracken was fixed with a permanence I had not anticipated, the lichen had adhered to three coat buttons, and a small piece of bark had attached itself to the back of my left ear in a position I discovered only when I attempted to remove my hat and found that the hat, the bark, and my ear had formed a coalition.

I held position near the birch cluster. Seven minutes passed. The hawthorn gave one sharp, decisive shudder. Everything stopped. I stood there for a further two hours. On my way out, I passed a farmer repairing a fence who looked at me for a long time with the careful neutrality of someone who has made a considered choice not to involve themselves.

The bark behind my ear required three applications of oil to remove. Partially. It remains, as of the submission of this report, approximately two-thirds present. The Institute physician tells me it will eventually work itself loose. It has been six months. I have stopped asking.

The Second Disguise: A Professional Approach and Its Consequences

Having concluded that my own construction skills were insufficient, I engaged Aldous Picquet, theatrical costumier of Varenpool, who has produced costumes for productions including The Linden King, The Ashen Shore, and a travelling version of When the Oak Fell, which he described as “critically admired.” I explained that I required a convincing tree costume capable of passing scrutiny from “discerning observers at a range of between five and thirty yards.” I did not specify the nature of the observers. In retrospect, this was an omission.

Mr Picquet arrived with two trunks, an apprentice, and a great deal of professional enthusiasm. The costume was extraordinary: a padded framework simulating a convincing trunk, real branches woven into a lightweight armature across the shoulders, individually hand-coloured silk leaves in twelve shades of green, the whole arrangement standing at approximately eight feet when occupied. Mr Picquet photographed it at considerable length. He photographed me inside it. I have since discovered that one of these photographs is displayed in his studio window with a small card reading “Custom Commissions, All Scales.” I have written to him about this. He has not replied.

The costume required stilts to achieve the correct height. I should state, for the benefit of any scholars contemplating similar methods, that I had not previously used stilts. I had also not previously attempted to walk through woodland on stilts, which presents a category of challenge entirely distinct from level ground that I had not given sufficient consideration during the planning stages.

The first hundred yards went adequately. The silk leaves caught the morning light. I allowed myself a moment of genuine satisfaction. I was, in a meaningful sense, a tree.

The ground near the birch cluster dips slightly towards a natural hollow. The left stilt found the edge at the precise moment the right one did not. I went down with a slowness that Tobeth, in his subsequent account, described as genuinely impressive. The branch framework caught on the surrounding birches as I fell and produced, briefly, an arrangement in which I was suspended at a diagonal between two trees, connected to them by my own armature, making a sound Tobeth described as “somewhere between a ship in a gale and a very surprised wardrobe.” I then completed the descent to the ground, at which point the trunk framework separated from the stilts, and the branch armature detached from one shoulder, and the silk leaf canopy settled over my head like a very expensive tablecloth.

I lay still. Above me, through the silk, I could hear the birches flickering. Rapidly, continuously, in the quick, overlapping pattern of the gossiping cluster. I cannot prove the trees were laughing. I am also not going to pretend they were discussing something else.

I submitted Mr Picquet’s invoice to the Institute’s accounts department the following week. Professor Dreech returned it with a note asking me to clarify the line item that read “bespoke arboreal performance framework, full canopy, with stilts.” I wrote back to say it was field equipment. He wrote back to say he had asked Tobeth. I have not pursued the expense claim further.

The Third Disguise: Naturalistic Integration, and the Goat

The stilts had been the primary source of instability. I adopted instead what I have termed naturalistic integration: materials gathered from the immediate environment, assembled in situ, so that my scent at least would carry the smell of that specific wood rather than of a scholar who had spent the week in a room that smells of old books and linseed oil.

I arrived before dawn, carrying only the hessian base and a small knife, and spent the first hour of darkness gathering fallen branches, bracken, bark, wood sorrel, and a quantity of ivy that seemed, at four o’clock in the morning, to offer considerable potential. I will not describe the assembly process in any detail, except to note that ivy is more difficult to manage than it appears in good light, and that by the time I had finished, I was wearing what appeared to be a large and structurally uncertain hedge.

I found my position and waited. The wood rested in the profound, indifferent stillness of trees that are simply elsewhere. A squirrel assessed me from above and continued without comment. Forty minutes passed.

Then the goat arrived.

I do not know where it came from. There are no farms in immediate proximity, and I have no explanation for how it accessed the wood or why, of all the things available to eat in a well-provisioned woodland, it selected my disguise. It approached in silence, and I became aware of its presence only when it began eating the ivy off my left shoulder. I remained still, reasoning that a modest reduction in foliage was manageable compared to the potential scientific value of the moment. The goat worked its way round to the wood sorrel, which it found particularly satisfying, and consumed it entirely. It then reached the bracken, found it less agreeable, and departed in the same direction it had come from, without haste and without looking back.

I looked at what remained. The ivy coverage was substantially reduced. The wood sorrel was entirely gone. The bracken had shifted into a configuration no longer attached to anything structural and rested in a loose pile around my feet. I was, in honest terms, a man in a hessian sack standing in a pile of bracken, in a wood, at six in the morning.

The birches chose this precise moment to begin a Troot.

Their leaves caught a small breeze in that familiar, conspiratorial cascade. The ash leaned. The hawthorn quivered with what I have come to recognise as anticipatory opinion. After fourteen months, something was happening within twenty feet of where I was standing. I reached, very slowly, for my notebook.

The hawthorn gave one sharp, decisive shudder. Everything stopped. I stood there in the diminishing bracken and the cold for three further hours. Nothing moved again.

Tobeth’s account is in Appendix F. He titled it “The Goat Incident” without consulting me. This is now its official designation in the project records.

The Fourth Disguise: The Ditch Incident, and Where Matters Currently Stand

The flaw in all previous approaches had been movement. A tree does not walk to where it stands. It is simply there. What was required was not to arrive but to be placed.

I borrowed a lightweight garden frame from my landlady, Mrs Wick, who watched me leave with it with the settled resignation of a woman who has made her peace with her lodger. I packed the frame with branches, moss, individually wired oak leaves, and the hessian, painted overall with mud and clay to achieve a convincing bark-colouring. At three in the morning, Tobeth and his cousin Merrik positioned me within it, secured me to the frame with a cord, and advised me to remain absolutely still regardless of circumstances. Tobeth said “regardless of circumstances” twice. I should have asked him to clarify.

An hour passed. Two. Condensation gathered on the leaf-wire arrangement and dripped at regular intervals down the back of my neck. At around half past five, I became aware of trickling from the direction of the eastern ditch. It had rained heavily on the two preceding days. The ground beneath the frame began, with considerable politeness, to soften.

The left foot sank first, at a slight angle. The right foot sank a moment later but at a different rate, which introduced a lean. The lean increased. The mud and clay mixture, which had hardened overnight, cracked across my left cheekbone with a sound like a small wall giving way.

I went sideways into the ditch.

The ditch contained approximately fourteen inches of cold water, and a quantity of decaying leaf matter I will not describe further. The frame went with me. The branch arrangement and the leaf-wire sections distributed themselves across the ditch and its surroundings with a comprehensiveness that, under other circumstances, I might have found impressive.

I lay still. The birches began a Troot.

I want to be clear about this, as I believe it is scientifically relevant: the Troot began whilst I was lying in a ditch covered in leaf litter, soggy clay, and the wreckage of a garden frame, not fifteen feet away, and continued for an estimated twenty-five minutes. I could not see it. I could not take notes. My pencil was at the bottom of the ditch. But I could hear it: the dry, intricate rustling of rapid leaf exchange, the lower creak of the ash, a brief emphatic rattle from the hawthorn. It was the closest I had come, across fourteen months, to the one event I had set out to document.

Tobeth arrived at seven. He stood at the edge of the ditch and looked down at me for what felt like a considerable time.

“Did you see anything?” he said.

“I heard it,” I said.

He helped me out. On the walk back, he said, “I think the trees might be doing it on purpose.”

I told him to put that in the field notes. He titled it “The Ditch Incident.” It is in Appendix G.

Conclusions

The Troot is real. I am more certain of this than I have been of anything in twenty-two years of academic work, and I am prepared to state as much, before any faculty board, symposium, or review committee that cares to convene.

It cannot be directly observed. I do not mean by this that it is brief or rare. I mean that trees are better at noticing than we are at concealing ourselves, and that they have been standing still and watching the world move through them for considerably longer than we have been attempting to study it. The Troot is a private conversation. The participants see no reason to alter this arrangement on our account.

What I propose instead is a methodology of patient inference. Study the aftermath. Learn the conditions. Read the signs: wind moving east, canopy moving west; a single species moving whilst the others stand carefully uninvolved; the slow, unhurried creak of a single oak in perfectly still air. Sit near the edges of old woods at dawn and listen for the rustling that has nothing to do with weather.

Do not dress as a tree. The trees will notice. They noticed me in hessian. They noticed me with twelve feet of professional silk leaves and a theatrical framework. They noticed me at three in the morning inside a frame painted with mud. I believe they notice me when I am in Fallowmere, merely thinking about them, and communicate this to the Ordith birches through mechanisms I am not yet in a position to document, but fully intend to investigate once the Institute physician has finished with my ear.

The trees are not hostile. They are simply and entirely reasonable. They have been conducting their affairs since before we had words for any of it, and they will continue long after the last scholar has packed up his notes and gone indoors for tea.

They have no objection to being studied. They simply prefer that the scholar in question remain outside the wood.

Submitted to the Fallowmere Institute of Natural Inquiry, together with seven appendices, fourteen months of field notes, and one receipt from Aldous Picquet, theatrical costumier, Varenpool, submitted here for the third time on the grounds that twelve feet of individually hand-coloured silk leaves constitutes specialist field equipment, and the accounts department should demonstrate greater intellectual flexibility.
___________________________________________________

In accordance with Professor Dreech’s insistence on “public engagement,” the Institute requests reader input regarding the Troot, its behaviours, and the regrettable series of field incidents described in the accompanying report. Your responses will be added to Appendix H: External Observations & Unhelpful Opinions.

Total fieldwork hours: two hundred and forty-one.

Hours of productive observation: approximately twenty-five minutes, from inside a ditch, without a pencil.

The garden frame belongs to Mrs Wick. I have replaced it. She accepted the replacement without comment, in the manner of someone who had been expecting something of the kind.

Addendum: Professor Dreech has indicated he would like to visit Ordith Wood “to see the site for himself.” I have suggested the third week of next month, when I shall be in Varenpool for the symposium and therefore unable to accompany him. He has said he will manage perfectly well alone. I have not mentioned the ditch. He will, I think, find it himself.
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Author’s Note:

I hope you enjoyed wandering through this latest scholarly tangle.
Thank you to those of you dedicated few who were compelled to complete the Troot Survey for the Institute. I know they will be delighted by your responses.

-Chaiga T. Cheska