Why trees?
Trees. Majestic and beautiful.
I find them to be one of the most impressive and interesting forms of life on our dear planet Earth. But why, why do I feel this way? The list would be so long.
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” W.Blake
I would start this short post by saying that I consider them to be one of the most intelligent forms of life (before fungi), exceeding by far our human abilities and that it would require us a lot of resources to reproduce. Only the fact that trees have an underground internet built by soil fungi that helps them communicate and also share nutrients between them, is enough to sprout interest into your mind. I think their communication system is far more vast that we might be able to comprehend. Sometimes when I’m walking in the woods valley I touch them and imagine that they understand it in their own way. I wished we had developed a way to communicate with them. It could help us so much in understanding our connectivity with everything around us. What an amazing web of interconnected roots and branches!
I really do think they have ears and eyes, maybe not in the way we think they do but aren’t we limited as well by our conditioning? They are the longest living organisms on Earth. The old age doesn’t exit for them. My naive, simple mind tells me that in order for an organism to do this, you need to have a sort of intelligence.
Me next to The Majesty Oak, or simply Majesty, also known as the Fredville Oak, is the largest maiden oak in Britain, if not Europe, estimated to be around 800 years old (the landowner said it is older than this). It is located in Fredville Park, Kent, in Nonington near Snowdon. Photo taken in 2022.
Such incredible creatures should never be taken for granted. I am afraid we do. I wished just for a brief moment, a tree could talk our language. It would tell us all the incredible experiences and details about our evolution as a species, it would show us what it means NOT to be human, but to be something more than just a genetical organism. We don’t have the capacity to conceive such an amazing peculiarity. We don’t know the world, we just think we do.
It takes so long to grow a tree, so many summers and winters circling around, so many conflicts and climate changes. Our life would be much happier with them. We don’t even realize. It hurts. I am ashamed. I try to not think too long. It breaks me. I go in the forest, I sit with them, I try to listen.
I want to grow a forest. I can not save them.
I want to learn from them. Words fail.
We have dues to pay. No easy way out.
