In Praise of Trees

by Rev. Susan A. Moran

The Reading:

Consider the life of trees.
Aside from the axe, what trees acquire from humans is inconsiderable.
What we may acquire from trees is immeasurable.
From their mute forms flows a poise, a silence;
a lovely sound and motion in response to wind.
What peace comes to those aware of the voice and bearing of trees!
Trees do no scream for attention,
A tree, a rock, has no pretense, only a real growth out of itself,
In close communion with the universal spirit.
A tree retains a deep serenity.
It establishes in the earth not only its root system but also
Those roots of its beauty and its unknown consciousness.
Sometimes one may sense of glisten of that consciousness,
And with such perspective, feel that humans are not necessarily the highest form of life.
Cedric Wright.

I have loved trees all my life.  At four I described G–d as a creature made entirely of trees.  As high as a redwood and as pretty as a dogwood.  As a young teenager, I discovered a strand of birches on the coast of Maine that were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  They are still there, still beautiful.  When I was in my 20’s, I saw the redwoods and the sequoias for the first time and burst into tears at their majesty and grandeur.  As a new mother, my husband and I found ourselves owning a home, having lived in cities for the last 20 years of our lives.  It was amazing to both of us that our property had trees on it.  They were ours and we were theirs.  As a middle aged woman, I have grown more in love with trees as I have learned about their intelligence and their abilities.  And I have grown afraid for them, and their chances of thriving.

I am not alone in my devotion to trees.  Unitarian Universalists draw their living tradition from many sources, including Earth centered spirituality.  Native Americans have always shown great respect for trees.  Chief Dan George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, writes: The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass, speaks to me…My heart soars” (p. 42, Earth Prayers)

“Hinduism has long revered the tree.  Early seals from the Indus Valley cities (ca. 3000 BCE) depict the tree as a powerful symbol of abundance.  References to India’s trees can be found in a wide range of literature, particularly in epic and poetic texts.  India has a long history of forest protection, from the edicts of Asoka, to the individual work of various Rajas, to the modern Chipko movement, wherein women have staved off forest destruction by surrounding trees with their own bodies.” (fore.yale.edu/religion/hinduism):

The book of Leviticus, from the Jewish Torah instructs:

When you come to the land and you plant any tree, you shall treat its fruit as forbidden; for three years it will be forbidden and not eaten.  In the fourth year, all of its fruit shall be sanctified to praise the L-RD.  In the fifth year, you may eat its fruit.  -Leviticus 19:23-25 www.jewfaq.org: Judaism 101:

There is a Jewish holiday every year on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Shevat, the New Year for Trees.  There are a few customs or observances related to this holiday.  One custom is to eat a new fruit on this day, or to eat from the Seven Species described in the Bible as being abundant in the land of Israel.  The foods are: wheat, barley, grapes (vines), figs, pomegranates, olives and dates (honey) (Deut. 8:8).  Some people plant trees on this day.

Our seventh principle tells us that we humans are part of the interdependent web of all creation, and that we are simply a part of it.  It does not say that we are the most important link in the chain.  It also does not mention this sad fact: we are the most dangerous link in the chain.

Trees come in all shapes and sizes, and have been on this Earth for 370 million years (Wikipedia).  There are trees on the planet right now that stood when Jesus walked the Earth; some were there before his birth.  Trees give us oxygen, but also fruit, flowers, syrup and seed.  They give us shade and climbing practice.  They are also very adaptable.  Some tree species have developed root extensions that pop out of soil, in order to get oxygen, when it is not available in the soil because of excess water.  In her chapter on work being done in the tropical rain forests of Peru, environmentalist writer Elizabeth Kolbert describes a tree that has shown remarkable ability to move up the hill.  Let me back up.  Ms. Kolbert is visting with a professor from Wake Forest, Miles Silman, a tree enthusiast if there ever was one.  Mr. Silman and his graduate students have been studying the effects of climate change on vast tracts of trees in Peru for years.  They take measurements of every tree in various plots up and down a mountain.  Kolbert explains:

“Owing to the differences in elevation, each of Silman’s plots has a different annual temperature.  For example, in plot 4 the average is 53 degrees.  In Plot 3, which is about eight hundred feet higher, it’s 51 degrees, and in Plot 5, which is about eight hundred feet lower, it’s 56 degrees.” (Sixth Extinction, p. 158)

Because tropical trees react very sensitively to minute changes in temperature, one plot may contain species wholly missing from another plot.  Silman laid out these plots in 2003 and measures changes in migration every year.  He has found that in general, “global warming has driven the average genus up the mountain at a rate of 8 feet per year.” (Ibid p. 159) But he also found that some species acted very differently from others.  The trees known as Schefflera, which is part of the ginseng family, have been “racing up the ridge at the astonishing rate of nearly 100 feet a year.” (ibid, p. 159)

This tree may survive increasing heat while its cousin, the Ilex, commonly known as Holly, hasn’t moved at all.  Which tree will be on the Earth in another 100 years?

If Global warming isn’t harming our trees, our growing desire for lumber and recreational climbing may hurt the trees’ chances for survival.

In 2005 (Feb 14 edition), Richard Preston wrote an article in The New Yorker called “Climbing the Redwoods”.  Here are some fun and not so fun facts to know and tell from that article.  “In the 1840’s, when American settlers arrived in California, the redwood forest amounted to roughly two million acres of old growth trees… Today it is estimated that 90,000 acres of old growth redwoods have remained intact, in patches of protected land.  The remaining scraps of the primeval redwood forest canopy are like three or four fragments of a rose window in a cathedral, and the rest of the window has been smashed and swept away.  (pgs. 216-217)

It is the canopies of the redwoods, or their three dimensional labyrinths that are interesting to Stephen C. Sillet, a professor of botany and principal explorer of the redwood tree canopy.  There are redwood trees that are as old as the Parthenon and as tall as 370 feet—as high as a 35 story building.  Sillet explores these amazing ecosystems by climbing the trees with a complicated series of ropes and pulleys.

Preston writes: “Redwoods are able to reshape the local climate and environment in which they live.  They change the chemical nature of the soil, and they assume vital resources in the forest, particularly sunlight and water.  ‘We’re trying to get a feel for how much water is stored in the canopy-in the trees, in their foliage, in the canopy soil, and in other plants that live in the canopy’, Sillet said.  “There’s a lot of water up here.  These trees are controlling the movement of water in the forest.  How do they do that? What will happen as these forests change with global warming?” (p. 214)

Good questions.

A tree like a redwood cannot move but it adapts to stresses and injury just the same.  Sillet is quoted as saying: “A tree is not conscious, the way we are, but a tree has a perfect memory.  If you injure a tree, its cambium, its living wood-will respond, and the tree will grow differently in response to an injury.  The trunk of a tree continually records everything that happens to it.  But these trees have no voice.  My life’s work is to speak for these trees.” (p. 225)

We may be grateful for people like Stephen Sillet and Miles Silman.  And for the many researchers and activists working in the Amazon Rain forest, which you can read about in another amazing chapter in Elizabeth Kolbert’s book, Sixth Extinction.

We may also be grateful for folks like Elora Hardy, who discusses the many good qualities of the Bamboo tree in a recent TED talk.  It is best to view this TED talk as the homes Ms. Hardy and her team have built in Bali are sensational.  They are not only beautiful, but they are built almost solely with bamboo.

Ms. Hardy points out that bamboo is actually wild grass.  It grows on otherwise unproductive land — deep ravines, mountainsides.  It lives off of rainwater, spring water, sunlight, and of the 1,450 species of bamboo that grow across the world, we use just seven of them.  One of the types of bamboo sends up new shoots at an incredible rate.  She and her father watched a clump of dendrocalamus asper niger grow a meter in three days.  So, in three years, you have a brand new forest.  Ms. Flora and her company now harvest from hundreds of family-owned clumps.  Betung, as she calls it, is really long, up to 18 meters of usable length.  And it’s strong: it has the tensile strength of steel, the compressive strength of concrete.  Slam four tons straight down on a pole, and it can take it.  Because it’s hollow, it’s lightweight.  There is a photo of several men carrying one long bamboo pole; another picture of one woman carrying the pole as well as leaves.

Why aren’t more builders using bamboo?  Ms. Flora explains that unprotected bamboo weathers.  Untreated bamboo gets eaten to dust.  But her team figured out a way to treat it so that it is waterproof and bug resistant.  The stuff withstands earthquakes because of the bamboo’s innate flexibility.  After watching this (less than 10 minute) talk, I wanted to get on a plane to Bali and see these structures for myself.  They are some of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen.  It is news like this that inspires me and gives me hope.

Many years ago, in the midst of a heated discussion among women in an interfaith spirituality group I attended, a Catholic woman yelled to me, “you’re just a tree-hugging pagan.”  She did not mean it as a compliment but I loved the description then, and now.  I love people, I really do.  But, when I am upset or enraged, a walk among trees or a walk on the beach will calm me and soothe me and bring me back to my center.

My angry Catholic friend might be surprised to hear these closing words of Catholic mystic Thomas Merton:

“What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone,
In the forest, at night, cherished by this
Wonderful, unintelligible,
Perfectly innocent speech,
The most comforting speech in the world,
The talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges,
And the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it.
It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.
As long as it talks I am going to listen.”

May it be so.