Mysterious Tree Fallings

“Is that thunder?” I wondered. 
 
I was dazedly mulching underneath the clear blue sky and penetrating sun when a sudden ripping and crashing sound pounded out from the direction of the gravel hill up to the house. Val and I looked up, and so did everyone else – from their hand-weeding, mulching and push-hoeing – to stare, all together, at the wooded hillside where the great sound had come from.  
 
I did not spot the tree then, but later, driving up, sitting in the bed of the truck, the wind in my face, I saw the aged, giant tree, lying at rest in the woods.
 
Grandpa, puzzled, said, “I just don’t understand the physics of it – a great tree always seems to fall not during a wind storm, but when the air is hardly moving.”
 
I thought perhaps after surviving tremulous wind and havoc and holding tight to life, that tree had chosen a peaceful, beautiful afternoon to finally let go and fall to the ground – to decompose and join the Earth once again.