Air Temperature; 6 Degrees Time: 6.30am
Tree Talk
Tree Talk: Running in forest this morning… negotiating the logging trucks that have been carrying the trees out for the last month. Each load 38 tons… the trees still feel alive as they are carried away. I loathe it.
Sure I understand the philosophy that the forest is a ‘plantation’ and if there weren’t any need for the trees as timber there wouldn’t b a forest…but I beg to differ. Nature finds a way…there would be trees – perhaps not such a prolific array of pine…but there would be trees never the less.
For weeks it has felt like a grave yard…and I have had a few ‘polite’ discussions with men in suits regarding birds nesting and why the need to ‘strip’ the forest so brutally… I have been in told in a somewhat patronising tone … that birds simply fly to another tree and start again… and similarly those that nest on the floor simply relocate…
Really? Do these peeps not realise that one of the biggest threats to bird life is logging?
Having said that the fragrance of the fallen trees has been lush…even though its ‘message’ is not so great…the trees calling out to one another that a danger is a foot…
Think I am wacky? Well it is true that trees communicate… Not everyone goes as far perhaps in considering them sentient beings…but they communicate and look after each other never the less. Science may not be emotive but even the scientists are starting to recognise that trees commune with one another and that the matriarchs look after the saplings in mature forests, feeding them sugar through their root network until they are mature enough to break through the canopy and so attain the necessary amount of light for their survival themselves…
The work of Wohlleben relates how trees communicate through roots and their leaves…changing the chemicals within their branches and roots when they are under attack.. . and how the released chemicals travel in the wind to other trees to provide them with the warning and giving them an opportunity to release chemicals that make their leaves toxic to herbivores for example…Worth a read.
…So as I later pass under my ‘friend’ down by the river and touch her trunk whispering a ‘hello’ as I do every trip to the river…I smile.
Awareness is a gift…you literally ‘feel’ connected to the whole, because in truth,the reality is that we are already connected. Only man sadly has learnt ‘disconnect’ and treats that as ‘norm’…
Still…perhaps…just perhaps… Man and Science is staring to catch up??
Namaste
Enjoy your journey X