Probably a little sloppy - this is a first draft, after all. If you find gaps in the reasoning, feel free to share by commenting below.

If a Tree Falls...

Year 1

A tree fell in the forest.

A hunting party of the natives observed it happen, and promptly relayed the news back to the village.

Many of the villagers journeyed out to observe the fallen tree. There was significance to them, after all. This had been the Great Tree, the oldest and tallest in their region. All the tales told of its history, its watchful keep over the ancestors.

In honor of this exceptional moment in time, the village elders designated a feast of remembrance and rebirth, to be had every year.

One old man, who had traveled long ago in the outside world before coming home to rest in the land of his fathers, wrote of the Great Tree’s falling in a journal. The account was based, as the old man was too frail to make the journey himself, on the testimony of the hunting party and the villagers who had seen the tree fallen tree.

Soon, he passed away.

Year 30

Outside explorers reached the village for the first time, during the season of the feast.

Why do you celebrate, asked one among them, a scribe.

We commemorate the fall of the Great Tree, answered the villagers. They gave him the journal of the old man, written in a tongue foreign to them, and the scribe read it. Diligently, he copied the account of the tree’s fall.

The explorers left. One young man of the village, overcome with curiosity, went with them.

After further travels, the scribe returned to the great city from which he had come, taking the village man along with him.

Year 55

Historians arrived, eager to learn the story behind the tribes of the forest.

They found the village deserted, moss creeping over the burned-out foundations of its huts. Other native settlements had been abandoned well. Already, many of the forest people were giving up the traditional way and departing for the cities of the new world.

But it was not too late. The historians were able to gather up the legends and tales of the remaining forest people. Among these tales were the stories of the Great Bird, the Great Fish, the Great Bear, the Great Fairy, and the Great Snake. In each case, a feast was linked to either the unseen existence or demise of the village’s Great Object.

Ah, said the historians, observing the pattern. A common theme among the people of the forest: the ancestors have been protected by a Great Entity, which now resides only in our collective memory.

The historians wrote down their findings.

Year 60

The man of the village, under the tutelage of the scribe, had learned to read and write. Before his passing, the scribe had even charged him with the keeping of his many chronicles.

The scribe died. The village man set to work copying the scribe’s materials – many of which were degrading, most of which were unorganized, and all of which were written in a rather messy hand.

Upon completion of the project, he took the new copies to the city’s library, where they would be safe.

Not long after, a fire swept through the scribe’s estate, and it burned to the ground. Trapped in his room by flames, the man of the village perhaps took dying comfort in the fact that he had copied the work of the scribe before the originals were lost to history.

Year 200

A scholar discovered the 140-year old writings of a scribe of the city, attributed to another scribe some 30 years before, and recounting an event which was said to have taken place an additional 30 years before that.

That event, of course, was the fall of the Great Tree.

How interesting, the scholar mused, for he had never come across this story in his studies of mythology.

He searched for more accounts of the myths of these forest people, finding only one other – a compendium of their legends and tales which had been compiled 145 years ago – and the story of the Great Tree was not among them.

Ah, thought the historian. This “Great Tree” parallels the many other “Great” entities. Of course – our scribe has constructed an immediate first-person mythical account, no doubt using materials extant in his time, perhaps combined with an actual Great Tree story that was never written down, perhaps simply an extension and contextualization of the other “Great” myths.

Satisfied, the scholar wrote an article on the subject.

Year 2000

Daddy? asked the girl, as he closed the picture-book.

Yes?

Was the Great Tree real?

It was to the people that told the tale, sweetie. But according to real historians, who look at evidence, no – I don’t think it really existed.

Later, the man’s wife confronted him:

Honey, I wish you wouldn’t be always be so blunt, shooting down her childhood imaginings like that...

But I was just telling her the Truth! the man replied. Why should I pretend that some tree fell in a forest when we all know it never really did?