This forest that we know and love
And walk each day
Tolerates us.
This forest that tolerates us
Is like family extending in all directions,
A family that works,
A working family.
The oldest ones preside
Within sight of each other
In this house, this forest.
Grandmother in the kitchen,
Grandfather in the living room dozing in the rocker.
There is great uncle oak and aunt maple
Over-reaching the dilapidated walls
That used to box pastures but,
Having lost their human purpose,
Seem to have found a greater purpose
In reminding us of our folly
Which we manage to escape
By walking on paths that we have names for
Somewhere between plan A and B.
Oh forest family tolerate us.
To you we are but children.
Children having children!
Let us earn your trust,
May our children’s children
Also know and love you
And walk these paths
That we have named.
………………
Conversation with a friend
My friend:
Don’t know about you, but I feel like the forest is happy to see us. I believe the forest can read our hearts.
Me:
Perhaps. Our personal experience is all we have to go by I suppose.
Me:
I hear what you are saying about the forest reading our hearts, but, for the sake of discussion, I’m sticking with my more tepid reading of the forest’s feelings toward us.
We are just beginning to understand what the forest is outside of our need for maple syrup and wood and pretty walks and places that we can depend upon for escape from our challenging lives, for contemplation and renewal. But the forest as family, trees related to trees, that are communicating with each other via the fungal understory . . . The forest that doesn’t need anything from us to continue just fine, that forest, to my way of thinking, would be hard-pressed to love us even if our hearts are open and full. We gain so much from being in the forest, but the forest does not really benefit from us in any way I can think of.
Not in the long-run anyway. As a species, we haven’t demonstrated that we can think in terms of the “long run” — 8 generations.
We are responsible for Climate Change, which we might visualize as cresting like a great wave. Climate Change is going to prove to be more of a threat than anything we have unleashed on the forest, including the ubiquitous clear-cuts of the 19th century and the 1950s. Those forests that were clearcut, including the forest in my poem, are back, different, but mostly healthy; not because of anything we did to heal it, but because we left it alone. Climate Change will change the ecology of our forests irreversibly. Climate Change is like inoculating the planet with a high fever from which it may recover, but if it does, it will not be the same planet that it is now.
The planet has undergone upheavals before during its epic lifespan, and it will survive Climate Change, but this poem is about this forest, where I walk every day. This forest is facing some tough times, and for that, the human race is responsible. Therefore, I cannot imagine that we deserve its love or that it would be happy to see us. But I do not believe that forests are capable of hate, so I choose to imagine that it tolerates us . . . that it forgives us, in advance of what is about to play out. To the forest we are children. Children make mistakes. Hopefully we will learn from our childish mistakes.
My friend:
My response to your email is a bit complex, just like the email.
You start off with the phrase, “for the sake of discussion” which means to me “I don’t necessarily believe what I’m about to say, but it will keep the discussion going”. In this case, a repetitive discussion and argument you’ve put forward many times before.
You say the forest tolerates us at best because of the enormous damage humans have done to the forest over the past 500 years. Although you sense the intelligence of the forest, you do not give it the ability to distinguish between humans: we’re all a threat. After all, humans created climate change, the greatest threat so far to the forest (as you and I both know and are fully aware of). I believe the forest’s intelligence is capable of reading the humans in its midst. When we enter and greet this being, walking through, enjoying it in our way, it must be pleased. Plants are here to support animal life, and we in turn are here to support the plants. If we hold back from taking on our role, the forest is abandoned by us. I’ve heard indigenous people write this. The pronouns, “we” and “us” conflate you and me with the rest of humanity. “We,” here, hold an attitude quite different from those humans who see the forest as a financial resource.
On the contrary, what I’ve heard (from others in this community) is a desire to support wildlife and enhance the forest’s health . . . (Your) email says the forest is “just fine”, but also facing tough times. I see a bunch of survivors and opportunists all thrown together and plagued by deer and insects. And I see a few humans who want not only to keep the forest intact (by ownership under current use), but also begin to counteract some of the negative pressures on it, helping it heal.
Overarching this entire subject, as we are approaching it in this discussion, is the question “how do we know what the forest wants, needs, and is thinking?” I believe
We both understand that as a species, humans have great capability for both positive and negative actions. It is most common for people to project their own attitudes onto the blank screen of “what the forest thinks” And I choose, at this time of great danger and unravelling, to live, act and think so as to project a vision of hope, survival, healing and health. A necessary part of this is trying to learn how to listen to the unvocalized messages from our forest (and the rest of Gaia). In this, I hear the advice of the herbalists: trust, do it, look for results, pay attention.
Preaching and teaching, directed at the dying mainstream culture, is important work. So keep on writing! As people wake up in greater numbers, the morphic field of a new vision is strengthened. For those of us who’ve heard the message, the important work is to prepare for the great unraveling and plant the seeds of eventual healing.
My friend:
Do you have a copy of Braiding Sweetgrass?
in the section entitled “Picking Sweetgrass”, under the chapter ” Epiphany in the beans” (pg 124 in the paperback), Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about an incident in her creative writing class. It’s worth reading, in reference to this discussion!
Starts “I sat once in a graduate writing workshop”
Me to my friend:
You wrote: You start off with the phrase, “for the sake of discussion” which means to me “I don’t necessarily believe what I’m about to say, but it will keep the discussion going”.
Me: Yes, I have come to see that most of the time I am not 100% sure of anything, but, if I am 70% convinced that I believe or feel the truth of something I will try to back it up or put it out there. You are right, I have put this forward any number of times, but each time I articulate it I approach it from a slightly different angle.
You: You say the forest tolerates us at best because of the enormous damage humans have done to the forest over the past 500 years. Although you sense the intelligence of the forest, you do not give it the ability to distinguish between humans: we’re all a threat. . . . I believe the forest’s intelligence is capable of reading the humans in its midst. When we enter and greet this being, walking through, enjoying it in our way, it must be pleased.
Me: This has 30% – 40% of my agreement. Most people do not know what the f–k you are saying here. Most people who step into a forest, well, they bring with them their anxieties and angst (which is fine), because they need the calm of the forest to help them center. The forest would read that (chain saws always sound angry to me!), but that is not what we are talking about, I realize. Take “forest bathing”. When people are entering a forest for a forest bathing, they are probably (psychically / emotionally) in need of an emotional cleansing, which the forest provides. There are sacred forests in Japan that are available just for that. That is probably the ideal use of a forest to my way of thinking. (Side: I have to be very strong to enter a badly managed or clear-cut forest, because I feel the forest’s distress!)
You: Plants are here to support animal life, and we in turn are here to support the plants. If we hold back from taking on our role, the forest is abandoned by us. I’ve heard indigenous people write this.
Me: side: Don’t forget the foundational role of the fungal understory. Fungi aren’t plants. They are like the forest’s microbiome. On Monhegan, the understory is returning even though the forest is mostly hemlock. This is partly because the forest has been left alone for 125 years — no camping and people stay on the trails. (Downside to that is the forests could burn and probably will some day, but that would probably be a good thing for the health of the forest’s evolution, just not for tourism.) Also they figured out 30 years ago that fertilizer was damaging the aquifer so they stopped using commercial fertilizers around the late 80s, early 90s.
You: The pronouns, “we” and “us” conflate you and me with the rest of humanity. “We,” here, hold an attitude quite different from those humans who see the forest as a financial resource. No one in our (neighborhood)
has indicated that they want to cut and sell trees. On the contrary, what I’ve heard is a desire to support wildlife and enhance the forest’s health towards climax growth.
Me: I feel you are mostly right here, but I also know that even when you want to experience the forest (holistically), there is a whopping learning curve to “get there” which, arguably, calls for spending solitary time in the forest and communing with it, which is not the same as going for walks with a friend or even a partner, because when people are together, being social creatures, they talk. To let the forest in, as you know, first you have to stop talking, and that is a learned skill these days.
You: (Your) email says the forest is just fine, but also facing tough times. I see a bunch of survivors and opportunists all thrown together and plagued by deer and insects. And I see a few humans who want not only to keep the forest intact (by ownership under current use), but also begin to counteract some of the negative pressures on it, helping it heal.
Me: This gets tricky. The down-grading of the eco-system is mostly human driven (farms and managed forests!). So, are you saying that we know enough to reverse that? That is probably our biggest difference in how we approach forest-care.
You: Overarching this entire subject, as we are approaching it in this discussion, is the question “how do we know what the forest wants, needs, and is thinking?”
Me: Also, can we even say what we mean when we say “the forest”. When I key-in to the forest, first quieting my thoughts, maybe sit somewhere and just be with “the forest”, each tree begins to appear as an individual. That is how I know something is shifting. But the forest is not trees (as you know), and it is not plants and trees and wildlife. Just was we really have more non-human DNA in us than human, the forest is a living breathing presence of incredible complexity, (micro and macro). Speaking for our forest, the topsoil is very thin due to massive erosion over the decades and centuries and even the millenia. So, how the trees interact with each other through the fungal “internet” and their communal root-systems, reaches far beyond our current understanding. (I am always fascinated when I see two trees, sometimes of different species growing intimately close to each other, I sense something synergistic in how these trees are relying on each other.)
You: I believe we both understand that as a species, humans have great capability for both positive and negative actions. It is most common for people to project their own attitudes onto the blank screen of “what the forest thinks” And I choose, at this time of great danger and unravelling, to live, act and think so as to project a vision of hope, survival, healing and health. A necessary part of this is trying to learn how to listen to the unvocalized messages from our forest (and the rest of Gaia). In this, I hear the advice of the herbalists: trust, do it, look for results, pay attention.
Me: I am with everything you just said.
You: Preaching and teaching, directed at the dying mainstream culture, is important work. So keep on writing! As people wake up in greater numbers, the morphic field of a new vision is strengthened. For those of us who’ve heard the message, the important work is to prepare for the great unravelling and plant the seeds of eventual healing.
Me: I agree. The forest is sacred and it is our hope. Blessings to you too. Thanks for having this conversation with me.
My friend:
Something to keep in mind: when we speak of “most people”, it distances us from the task at hand as well as our own blind spots.
We live in a time of “getting-close-to-the-end” Not only the end of our personal life in the body, but also the end of the current dominant paradigm. I feel a sense of, not quite urgency, but a desire to not waste time, rather, to be filling my time with acts leading to positive change. So efficiency has become more important to me. And spending my time well. And communicating clearly. My wife and I are working to cultivate a community that lives as if the Divine were right here, within all of us, making our world and all of us and what we do, Sacred. Respectful, Harmonious, Inclusive, Resilient, One great earthy being, Gaia, composed of gazillions of details, sometimes seen as body parts or ecosystems or species or individual organisms (is there such a thing?)
Many years ago I took on, with others, the responsibility of owning 80 acres of “undeveloped ” land and the responsibility that goes with it. I made it my responsibility simply to keep danger and damage away from the land. If I knew then what I know now…. Now that I’ve nurtured two children and the gardens for 30+ years, I just want to get things done – in the face of the firestorm I believe is quickly approaching us. When you read “community”, above, think of it as inclusive of all the diverse life that surrounds and supports us. In this thread, you and I have been talking about the local Ecosystem we live within, and specifically, the forest. (The social and human-constructed elements are grist for other conversations.)
What actions are within our power to take that will bring enhanced diversity, robustness and health to the forest that we’ve adopted? How do we make sure that the forest concurs; that we are not just following our own projections?
We can go slow and watch the consequences of our actions. This means spending lots more time, quiet, in the forest – like you were writing of earlier.
Gary Lindorff - Nine Waves 