Trees have been here for a long time1. Those we like to think of as primitive, such as the Ginko, came to be about 300 million years ago. That means they have been here a thousand times longer than we have. The oaks and maples you have in the backyard have been around roughly 300 times longer than any possible backyard. The newest arrivals have been developing over the last 1.8 million years2. And they all have been busy creating a set of conditions that, if you wish to be ego-centric, is almost perfectly tuned for humans. If you turn that upside down, and are tree-centric, it is almost as though trees have been gardening humans. Whichever you choose, it has been happening for a long time and has shaped the world in extraordinary ways.
A networked community is potentially more effective and efficient than the lone individual in maintaining life. Since trees have been here essentially forever, you would expect them to have developed such a community. They have.
There is now a substantial body of scientific evidence that … trees of the same species are communal and will often form alliances with trees of other species. Forest trees have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony.3
Mother trees nurse their young, and interactively3 exchange materials and energy with cross-species neighbors, and communicate by noise, pheromones or electric signals,4 across a complex, networked community.
Lumber barons and traditionalists have a hard time accepting any or all of this. But there’s so much more going on in forests than we’re able to actually understand using the traditional scientific techniques.4 Natural History,5 incorporating Bateson’s concept of “mind”6, is the only paradigm that fits.
But along with Natural History and mind comes the necessary corollary that trees have agency. They act and interact not just with each other but across a wide range of species. Is it possible that some sort of connection might include us?
A broad range of spiritual stories and traditions claim such connections.
-Siddhartha Gautama achieved enlightenment and became the Buddha while communicating thanks to a bodhi tree for providing 49 days of shelter and support.
-In the Bible, trees are a named-creation, created before, and senior to, humans, and are featured in the first and penultimate chapters of the Book. Every major player in both old and new Testaments has trees associated with them, sometimes in a speaking role.
-In large segments of sub-Saharan Africa, the baobab tree is the ultimate mother tree, able to communicate both wisdom and terror.
- In Choctaw culture, trees are not just mere plants; they are the “Whispering Trees,” possessing the ability to communicate with those who know how to listen.7
Since the 60s and 70s, there has been a growing “Rights of Nature” movement, working to establish Nature as having an independent existence with certain inalienable rights.8,9 If a non-living, non-human, corporate figment of the imagination has rights, surely a real, tangible, living entity, by its mere existence, should have rights.
In 1972, the SCOTUS essentially laughed at the idea. Progress has been made. These days, under federal law, eagles have superior land-rights over humans, and several disparate cases have resulted in over ten billion dollars of tort remedies in restitution to Nature.10
In the time of ICEknapping, can we really hold out hope for the rights of Nature? Yes, the idea lives and is more prevalent than we might have guessed.11
Damage is being done that cannot be undone. We must work to limit and end the damage. October 18th is almost here. Show up if you can. If you cannot be there, call and tell the sycophants, “None of it in my name.”
And for you, take a break, go out, pick a tree, and connect. Think about the seasons of its life and how they might parallel yours. How would it be different if the tree weren’t there? Is it “old”, “young”, in-between? What kinds of changes and history has it lived through? Sit and dream at the base. Admire and run your hands down the bark. If it has leaves still, look at them closely. Are they bigger to the south or to the north? Examine the organization of twigs and branches. If there is another of the same species, how are they the same, different? Show up, spend time on a regular basis, notice the changes. In short, connect, commune, treasure your tree, and rejoice in the changes the tree brings to you.
Thanks for being here.
1) What I do not know about trees would fill a bookshelf. A favorite teacher is a book, new to me, combining art, poetry, science, and extraordinary writing. Katie Holten, The Language of Trees, a Rewilding of Literature and Landscape. Tin House, Portland. 2023
2) https://rfs.org.uk/learning/tremendous-trees/tree-evolution/
3) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees180968084-/
4) https://e360.yale.edu/features/exploring_how_and_why_trees_talk_to_each_other
5) https://www.clrn.org/what-is-natural-history/
6) Mind recognizes change in the environment or self, processes the information, and responds. It does not require a brain or nervous system. Trees clearly have mind. Bateson claimed the study of Life was Epistemology.
8) This is not “environmental rights” that are all about human rights to clean air, water, etc. This is more like animal cruelty laws. Dogs have a certain set of generally recognized rights simply because they exist.
11) https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2117&context=mjil