In the north trees die lying down, like people. Their enormous bared roots look like the claws of a giant predatory bird caught in a rock. From these gigantic talons thousands of tiny tentacles, whitish offshoots covered with warm brown bark, stretched down into the permafrost. Each summer the permafrost retreated a little and a tentacle-like root would then immediately use its fine hairs to pierce and anchor itself in each inch of thawed ground. Larches reach maturity at three hundred years, slowly raising their mighty, heavy bodies on weak roots that are spread all over the stony ground. A powerful storm easily fells these weak-kneed trees. Larches would fall on their backs, with their heads in the same direction, and they died lying on a thick soft layer of bright green and bright pink moss.
Only the twisted, crooked, low-growing trees, exhausted by constantly turning toward the sun for warmth, stayed obstinately on their own, keeping their distance from one another. They had kept up this intensive struggle for life for so long that their tortured, crushed heartwood was of no use. A short, many branched trunk, covered all around with terrible growths, like the scarred bark when a branch has been broken off, was unusable for construction, even in the north, where nobody was fussy about the quality of house-building materials. These twisted trees could not even be used for firewood, since their resistance to the ax could exhaust any workman. This is how they avenged themselves on the whole world for the damage the north had done to their life.