Trees and Forests

I’ve enjoyed trees much more than I’ve understood them. I recently finished reading Pete Wohlleben’s book The Hidden Life of Trees and learned many new things, not the least of which is that it’s faintly ridiculous to plant a tree all by itself, or even deliberately spaced at regular intervals. Trees are not solitary, most of them; they thrive together, not separately. Most of their interactions are both subtle and subterranean, but very real.

Trees form forests not by accident but because 200-400 million years of evolution has created a robust approach for doing so. Trees grow and form a forest and then the forest cultivates and nurtures the growth of new, healthy trees. It’s a system, a society—like herd animals, but with very little mobility and a much longer lifespan.

Which brings us to a difficult fact about trees and forests: they are, examined as a whole and left undisturbed, more like geographic features to us than plants or animals. One possible approach to forestry is to simply leave a desired area alone and let nature take its course—for about 500 years. Obviously, this sort of enterprise is mostly intolerable to humans because we’re so short-sighted, short-lived and short-tempered in comparison. I mean, we’re not talking about a parrot that lives to 80, or a turtle (tortoise, whatever) that lives to 150. We’re simply not used to anything that happens on that timescale and we’re getting worse at it every year. We’re more comfortable with the fact that our pets don’t live as long as we do, and we can consider their entire lifespan in the context of certain periods of our lives. Trees can easily do that to us, without exaggeration or arrogance.

It is one thing to look up at the stars and consider how far their light has traveled and for how long, and to feel small and insignificant as a consequence. But the stars have always felt impossibly distant—trees we can touch. We can regard trees up close and watch them grow from year to year, but we can’t really inhabit their world any more than we can live underwater. We are like small children who must be sent to bed long before the adults finally turn out the lights and lie down to sleep.

It is humbling to think of species who take such time to grow and live; who endure for so many seasons. It is overwhelming to consider how we might even begin to make preparations for the rebirth of a forest. But the depth of those feelings are matched by the contentment and peace to be found among old trees.