“The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.”
~ John Muir
Since I can remember I’ve loved the forest. Growing up in Kyiv, Ukraine, we lived only 30 minutes away from a beautiful mixed forest with the patches of the needle-carpeted path leading to a picturesque opening with a large pond in the middle. Here my family and I spent a lot of weekends. My parents told me a story that the first time I “went” camping was when I was 10 months old and my dad carried me in an improvised backpack made into a child carrier. My parents loved camping as the only way to be free in the communist grip of the Soviet Union. The love they passed onto me. And we, kids, grasped this concept super-quickly. Both kids and parents alike, we played soccer, swam in the lake, munched on fresh berries found in the forest and slept in the heavy army-type tents that blocked so much sun that you could pretend it’s still dark outside till the late morning sleep-in. Since then, the smell of evergreens and firewood are my favourites!
I moved to Canada to be close to the two passions of mine: forests and canoes. Being in the wilderness takes my mind off the day-to-day worries, creates a space to think and become one with nature, dream things that one can’t apprehend sitting in front of a TV or being on any other screen. I couldn’t wait to get back into the wild, into the canoe and on the water so that my lungs could breathe deeper, my eyes rest on the sea of green and blue, feeling the wind of my face and warmth of the sun on my body, with its light reflected in million little sparkles on the water and my soul resting in the feeling of peace and joy that only comes with being free.
But enough about me… the forest… the trees never failed to impress with their height, strength and ability to live for hundreds of years, silently watching us, humans, living, struggling and sometimes dying under its trunks and canopies. For thousands of years, people and trees shared this planet with humans being a minority… This is until recent… For the past couple of centuries, things changed. We learned a lot from the world around us and how to use it to serve our needs. The trees became one of the first victims of this learning: we learned to burn them for warmth and to cook food, we got better and better at using wood for building shelter, we learned how to harvest its fruits and use bark and leaves for everything from boats to medicine. We built houses and churches, whole cities, using this versatile and giving material, bending it to all our desires without a word of complaining. Even when we discovered that the very air we breathe is thanks to the trees and the oxygen they exhale, it didn’t stop us from ruthlessly cutting, logging and building as there are so many of them. No matter what we do, we thought, nothing can change this! And yet again, we are wrong… When the New World was “discovered” by the first Europeans, the Indigenous peoples of this land wanted to tell us, to explain how important it is to live in harmony with nature and do no harm, but we ignored these “inconvenient” voices in our pursuit of power and world domination. Well, back then, you may say, we didn’t know any better…
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
~ John Muir
What about now? If you haven’t heard about “The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate” book by Peter Wohlleben, you may want to check it out. This short little book will change your view on what you thought you knew. We all learned in school how important the trees and the forests are to human survival, but the fact that trees, while living their slow, largely unnoticed by humans lives, have their communities, care for young and old, communicate distress and danger, fight for survival and die if lost the battle that can continue for decades and sometimes hundreds of years! Now, this should make you pause and think… But did it? It feels like we are missing the trees for the forest… How can the life that is taking care of our survival on this planet be ignored for so long without a second thought about how harmful and shortsighted we are? And yet it continues…
Every day millions of trees are being cut to give way to farmlands and pastures, lumber for our furniture and paper we write on, lost to the getting-so-more-often forest fires and chemicals that we throw into the atmosphere so that we can live a comfortable life. Don’t take me wrong, I’m not saying that a comfortable life is a bad thing. I’m just saying that everything in the universe is interconnected and, therefore, no living thing can continue taking without giving back; no species can survive without paying the price for mismanaging things or going too far down the rabbit hole of overconsumption. If we didn’t know before, we should know better now and decide what we can do with this knowledge.
Let’s see what we actually do know and what we can do to dig ourselves out…
- Our breathing and living on this planet: As kids, we learned how much we all rely on forests. Here is what Mita Sen, UN Forum on Forests in UN DESA said on International Day of Forests on March 21, 2020: “We all rely on forests. They generate the oxygen we breathe, provide water to quench our thirst and livelihoods to some 1.6 billion people worldwide. They play a critical role in a healthy climate, and ultimately, for our survival… Over 1.6 billion people depend on forests for timber, food, fuel, jobs, and shelter, but all of us depend on forests in one way or the other. Forests provide critical ecosystem services that affect our climate, rainfall patterns, and watersheds, at the same time they are also home to 80 percent of all land-based biodiversity. According to some estimates, the economic value of ecosystem services provided by the world’s forests could be worth as much as US$16.2 trillion annually.” This is if you prefer to translate it into the monetary equivalent… Money or not, we cannot underestimate the importance of forests or pretend we don’t know anymore. In addition to providing habitats for animals and livelihoods for humans and preventing soil erosion, forests are our best allies and perhaps the best hope in mitigating climate change. And here is why…
- Water: In addition to breathing, we also intuitively know that forest has to do with the water supply especially in the areas far away from the coastline. Long enough people observe that deforestation and clearing land for farming causes the land to dry out over time, ultimately changing the climate of large regions. The examples are plenty. Check out this article in Scientific American about Mau Forest in western Kenya and how the forest is believed to act as a water pump published in 2013. More on the “forest as a water pump” theory: though commonly accepted as controversial by the scientific community, it explains how water is carried inside the continents way over the first 400-mile zone off the coasts, supporting our cities, towns and farmlands communities. According to the theory, this is because of the water a) evaporates off the leaves during rainfall and b) consumed by the forest water is released into the air through transpiration. All this water creates clouds that are “pushed” inside the continent as long as there are trees with canopies on the way. Here is a pdf of the study if you’re interested. Whether the theory is correct or not, the conclusions are certain: no forests mean no rain, no rain means no soil fertility, no soil means no plants and with time, the land becomes a dry dusty desert. This is happening in Africa and North America, this also explains how the Amazon Basin gets the rain and the very reason the Amazonian rain in Brazil is steadily drying out.
- Our mind, body and soul: One doesn’t need to be a scientist to notice that connecting with nature calms us, soothes our nerves and helps us to think more clearly and creatively. You may or may not have heard about Shinrin Yoku as translated into English ‘forest bathing’ or simply put taking a mindful walk in the woods that was developed in Japan during the 1980s and is becoming a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine. Forest bathing is the intentional practice of connecting with nature and surrounding yourself with the energy of the natural world. Since it’s human ancestry, we naturally find calm, clarity and healing in woods. The benefits are plenty including reducing stress and helping fight depression. The body responds by boosting its immunity and healing ability by an increased amount of blood cells that help us fight chronic illness. This includes diabetes, cancer and tumours and accelerates recovery from surgery and illness. Even a short walk in the woods reduces our blood pressure and is linked to improved sleep and recovery.
- Healing qualities and use in medicine and beauty products: People used medicinal plants for as long as we know due to their healing, preventive and aromatic qualities. It’s estimated that 70–80% of the world’s population continue relying on natural medicine for their healthcare needs. Though most of us think of herbs, flowers and mushrooms as the main source of medical ingredients, trees are often playing a more important role both by providing healing properties and protecting medical herbs and shrubs growing under their canopies. Did you know that the air in young pine forests is almost germ-free? Beech tree bark is used as a tea for lung problems, including tuberculosis? Spruce needles besides being aromatic have antimicrobial and immune-stimulating properties? There are endless evidence and sources, so I will just mention a couple: check out this study on The importance of forests to protect medicinal plants: a case study of Khadimnagar National Park, Bangladesh. And I like the list of 20 trees and the amazing qualities they possess.
- Youth growth and development: It’s been discussed and widely agreed by the older generation (who still remember those “good old days” when kids were growing “wild”, running in the fields, climbing trees, exploring nearby ponds and woods collecting frogs and insects, and sometimes giving their parents a scare) that growing up or even experiencing wilderness once-in-a-while helps kids to learn about the world and themselves more than schools do. One of my favourite books “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder” by Richard Louv sparked an international movement. Here in Canada a lot of parents understand how free, special, inspirational, healing and rewarding connection with nature makes kids feel and give their kids every opportunity to get out there by taking them camping and on canoe trips, sending them to overnight summer camps (some of which exist for over or nearly hundred years like Onondaga and Glen Bernard camps in Ontario), buying cottages (if they can afford it) to take kids out of the “concrete jungle” as often as possible. I have first-hand knowledge of this effect as a volunteer for Project Canoe, the amazing organization that helps youth transform their lives through the power of the outdoors. For over 40 years they help youth (more than 4,000 to-date) to overcome systemic, mental health and family dysfunction barriers they face in life. Organized by Project Canoe wilderness canoe trips not only teach youth basic canoeing and camping skills and environmental awareness, they develop valuable social and leadership skills: co-operative decision making, teamwork, conflict resolution and personal skills as resilience, grit, and self-respect. This is in addition to the magic of being able to get “lost” in the woods, sing songs around the campfire, watch the sunset on the lake and sleep under the millions of stars! Everyone who did it even once will never forget and will always want to come back…
- Trees as a direct protector against extreme weather: In addition to all the above, planting trees is a well-known way to combat natural disasters caused by extreme weather such as droughts, storms, floods, hurricanes, and landslides. For example, planting trees on a mountain slope reduces avalanches and keeps the ground fertile, helping to rebound after the disaster sooner. Here is another example by the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean how locals cope with natural disasters by planting trees and harvesting rain…
And the strongest forest is the one that is left undisturbed. This is because when trees grow naturally, their wood is more dense and tough with forest canopy formed by mature tree crowns making it harder for winds and changing temperatures to penetrate. Here, in the shade of the forest, the soil will stay moist and fertile, allowing the humus of the dead trees to support the new growth and renew itself for thousands of years, keeping us, humans, safe. If we know how to respect and protect it that is.
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
~ John Muir
Yes, restoring forests is a huge undertaking that involves not only replanting the trees but also restoring soil (in some cases ancient soil beds are virtually impossible to restore within one or even a few humans’ lifetimes) with its microclimate, biological environment and ecosystem of countless species (“there are more life forms in a handful of forest soil than there are people on the planet”), large and microscopic and that requires a long time. Therefore, the best approach is to preserve what we already have. Peter suggested a few ways to do it by putting the entire area under protection without any human interference. For example, the community of Hummel used part of the forest as an arboreal mortuary, where the trees are leased out as living gravestones for urns buried under them. This would be my choice: to be buried under the great tree and surrounded by a beautiful ancient forest! Though perhaps not the most conventional way to think about forest… Other areas are leased to firms as their contribution to protecting the environment. Again, this requires will, non-for-profit thinking to offset costs of protecting and restoring forests and continuous injection of funds and resources.
However, there is a different approach that may be more sustainable by making it profitable to keep the forest.
Let’s look at the examples of profitable forestry practices:
- Make sustainability a for-profit business: Check out this article where Martin Ewald, Investment Manager at a time at Allianz Climate Solutions, explains that (and how) we can turn forest protection into a profitable business.
- Make saving forest a win-win for people and businesses: Going back to The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, here the examples of how to keep forests “undisturbed and productive”:
- Guatemala, Maya Biosphere Reserve: Tourists employ residents who would otherwise be cutting down forests to sell the lumber and grow food in the clearings.
- Scotland, Caledonian Forest: You can buy a piece of forest originally owned by nobility to keep lumber companies out.
- American southeast: Department of Defence contributes to the National Fish and Wildlife foundation’s efforts to restore longleaf pine ecosystems as buffers around military bases contribute to military readiness.
- Grow the forest as a natural carbon sink: we all know that the forest plays an invaluable role in capturing and storing carbon. Peter referred to this study of 670,000 trees on every continent of the world by an international team of scientists led by Nate Stephenson, lead study author and a forest ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). It proves that the older trees are growing quicker, not slower as previously thought. So for the trees to absorb more carbon we need to allow them to grow old. The belief that cutting and replanting the forest is good to rejuvenate it is misleading and likely driven by the fact that the lumber becomes less valuable after a certain age. “Trees with trunks 3 feet and diameter generated three times as much biomass as trees that were only half as wide. So, in the case of trees, being old doesn’t mean being weak, bowed, and fragile. Quite the opposite, it means being full of energy and highly productive. This means elders are markedly more productive than young whippersnappers, and when it comes to climate change, they are important allies for human beings.” Check this Huffington Post article by Becky Oskin on this study where Todd Dawson, a forest biologist at the University of California, Berkeley told LiveScience. “If you want a forest to be a carbon sink, you may want to manage it to make sure you always have a lot of older trees in it.” That’s why I love to see projects like this one in North Carolina protecting nearly 5,000 acres of native pine and hardwood forests that hopefully landowners can maintain forever.
- Prevent forest wildfires: When European settlers populated North America, they found thousands of miles of lands and forests that were not empty. Indigenous peoples lived here for thousands of years and have a special relationship with this land including knowledge, respect and sustainable practices to ensure that it continues to provide for future generations. It took us a while to learn that advanced technology doesn’t make one person superior to another, and there is a lot we need (and should) learn from the peoples who depended on, understood and loved this land for many generations. Please see this post by Amy Cardinal Christianson, Fire Research Scientist with the Canadian Forest Service on traditional Indigenous burning practices in Alberta’s southwest Rockies. As their ancestors did, Indigenous peoples across the continent increasingly demand the right to manage their land in ways that both protect it from wildfires and foster the plants and animals they depend on. They work with nonprofits, academic researchers and governments to manage the forest through the use of carefully planned fires. “From burning savannahs to improve hunting conditions in Brazil to burning tropical wet-dry grasslands in Africa for livestock, Indigenous cultures have shared a tradition of carefully modifying landscapes using fire,” she said. The devastating get-out-of-control fires that destroyed thousands of square miles of forests (often larger in size than whole states!), wiped out nearby communities, killing wildlife and livestock alike and turning the bountiful land into the charred desert may have been prevented should we listened earlier. I urge you to read this National Geographic article by Charles C. Mann and check the Indigenous Peoples Burn Network website to learn more. I want you to get to your conclusion whether the narrow focus on “timber only” was worth it, causing billions of dollars in damages each year. Or how flying tens of thousands of firefighters from as far as Canada and Australia to fight fires in the West makes more sense than paying Indigenous burners with hundreds of years of experience for preventive fire, creating job opportunities and saving the ecosystem for generations to come.
Conclusion:
“Where the determination is the way can be found.”
~George S. Clason
As the old saying goes “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”. “We didn’t know any better” is no longer an excuse. If we continue defying both science and thousands of years of experience, shame on us! And I’d say if there is one thing that we all can get behind no matter who we are, where we live, or the colour of our skin: we all need air to breathe.
What WILL help us is looking and solving problems with the AND in mind: we live comfortably AND don’t annihilate the forest, the very lifeline for our survival on this planet. Produce enough food for all AND do not cut millions of hectares of trees to free the land for farming and agriculture. We now know that when we set our minds to solve problems, we can and will always find a way to solve them. And with the knowledge and power that we now have, we can do it in a way that it will make us all happy, humans and trees. Luckily, it’s not too late. We have a great chance to get things right and all we need is will and action.
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”
~ Napoleon Hill
Imagine the day when the cities are no longer a smelly jungle of the tall concrete buildings where sunlight doesn’t even make it to the bottom, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, but a forest of tall trees leading to the open meadows! Inhale the ever-changing scent of needles, blooms or sweetgrass; rest your sight on the beautiful untouched landscape, appreciating impermanence and constant change of the natural world around us. It’s difficult not being able to let your imagination run free when you’re surrounded by nature!
If you don’t remember it growing up, it’s not too late… We all look like children to the old trees… Go and take your children to the woods, let them run free and barefoot on the grass, climb the tree branches, learn to appreciate the beauty of a sunrise, the changing colours in the fall, and the magic of the first green leaf in the spring. Walk into the cool water of the brook, climb the grassy hill far from the city’s pollution of all kinds including light, so that you can see the stars. What you can give your kids is more than just the understanding of our natural world; you can give them the freedom of imagination, the most powerful motivator to get up in the morning, appreciating the cycle of life and our part in it. And all this magic is free, available to you at any time and the one that sets YOU FREE…
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