Start Of Winter example essay topic

Once many years ago I was graceful and the wind rustled through my leaves. Birds nested in my branches, children used to climb me and fathers used to build tree houses on my strongest branches. Those days are over now, my journey starting one cold winter's morning. The day had started as normal with my inhabitants flying off early to fetch food for their young.

The familiar yet dreaded sound of lorries sounded in the distance, dreaded because since the start of winter they had arrived every morning to remove some of us for firewood. Against my prayers they stopped next to me and began to unload their axes. One young and clearly overworked man took the first hack at my once perfect trunk and then everyone joined in. I could feel the pain with each and every hack yet I tried to fight against it and continue standing tall even though I could feel myself slowly tilting over.

I could finally take it no longer and fell down to the earth with a cracking bang. I lay there waiting to be broken down into smaller pieces for removal but strangely, unlike my friends around me, I was loaded onto the lorry as a whole, something I could not quite understand. The journey was long and bumpy on a craggy sand road but finally I reached my destination, a large airfield! I wondered what I was doing here but was not left wondering too long, after overhearing a conversation between a group of men I found out that I was to be the biggest aircraft ever built. The next few months I spent being reshaped, having an engine installed and eventually being sanded and painted. After being renamed 'Mooney' in big red letters on my side I was ready to take to the sky!

It was winter again, presumably a year after I was chopped down. The situation was very different from what I expected last winter. Instead of being burnt and forgotten about I was about to be on the front of every newspaper in the country, maybe even the world, as the biggest aircraft ever to fly. I was washed down and removed from my hanger and then lined up on the runway in front of thousands of cheering spectators, all wanting a glimpse at my beauty. My first trip was to deliver cargo to America, it would also be the first cross Atlantic flight. After being loaded with cargo, I set to the skies and left for America.

Unexpectedly, across the Atlantic I encountered a huge thunderstorm directly in front of me. I tried to fly through it yet the winds were too strong and my wings were violently ripped off my sides and I started a downward fall. The sudden free fall brought back memories of last winter yet this was far more serious. I hit the ocean with a huge splash, trying to stay afloat was useless, the cargo was too heavy for me and I slowly sank to the bottom, hitting the seabed with a bump. I have been here ever since yet I don't see it as a failure rather as the opportunity to experience a new place, one where ships regularly drop in and where humans don't venture.

Maybe one day I will rise to the surface, wash up on a shore and start a new journey again, but for now I will be happy to stay here, just being grateful that I was not chopped up and burnt that one cold winters morning.