Vox Naturae

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

The Forest As Community

Deep in the Quiet Wood

Are you bowed down in heart?
Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life?
Then come away, come to the peaceful wood,
Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now,
From out the palpitating solitude
Do you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains?
They are above, around, within you, everywhere.
Silently listen! Clear, and still more clear, they come.
They bubble up in rippling notes, and swell in singing tones.
Now let your soul run the whole gamut of the wondrous scale
Until, responsive to the tonic chord,
It touches the diapason of God’s grand cathedral organ,
Filling earth for you with heavenly peace
And holy harmonies.

--> “Deep in the Quiet Wood” by James Weldon Johnson,

published in Fifty Years & Other Poems (The Cornhill Company, 1917).

Shenandoah National Park, Robinson River

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I have always loved trees. Trees evoke something enchanting, magical, and primeval in our psychic - the lovely, dark and deep woods of Robert Frost. But we often overlook the mystery and the magic. For example, in college I learned that forests evolve through survival of the fittest -- individual trees locked in a struggle for resources -- a free-enterprise ecosystem composed of strong, silent types.

But the forest as a a cauldron of competition with separate, individual trees, each competing for survival, is largely an illusion. Instead, trees like other living things have evolved mechanisms of cooperation as well as competition. As a result, trees are not lone and silent individuals, but a bunch of chattering socialists.

For example, research is showing that trees regularly emit and respond to cues and signals conveying information; these signals fly from tree to tree, both through the air and underground, in a manner that rivals the Internet.

How do they do this? In a phrase, better living through chemicals. Plants release chemical compounds into the both the air and the soil as a means to signal threats and environmental conditions, or to recognize kin. In this context, think of individual chemical compounds as the words and combinations of the compounds as the sentences. Specific blends of compounds dictate the content of the message.

When a giraffe starts chewing leaves from the acacia tree, the tree notices the injury and emits a distress signal in the form of ethylene gas. Upon detecting this gas, neighboring acacias start pumping tannins into their leaves. In large enough quantities tannin can sicken or even kill large herbivores.

Below ground, chemical cues are transmitted via a network of tree roots and fungal hyphae. This mycorrhizal network connects multiple trees (even trees of different species) and can extend across hundreds of acres. Research has shown that this network, among other things, facilitates such tree-to-tree activities as:

· Signaling water-stress (nearby trees will then respond by closing down their stomata to conserve water and pass along the signal to still others).

· Sharing water (Mature trees with deep root systems share water with young seedlings with shallower roots).

· Sharing food (both nutrients and sugars/carbon)

o Mature trees sending food to shaded kin seedlings

o Across species, Douglas fir and paper birch have been shown to exchange food depending on need during the year, and

o Dying trees have been shown to transfer or “dump” their food reserves to other trees; [Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees]

Why should one tree waste energy clueing in its competitors about a danger or sharing resources with trees of other species? All living things seek to eat, avoid being eaten, and reproduce. The use of mycorrhizal networks by trees is aids all three of these goals. They help trees secure resources, signal threats, and increase the survival of their seedlings.

David George Haskell in his book The Songs of Trees sums up this unique form of cooperation among trees nicely:

“Although trees … seemingly stand as detached individuals, their lives subvert this … view…. Life is embodied network. These living networks … are where ecological and evolutionary tensions between cooperation and conflict are negotiated and resolved. These struggles often result not in the evolution of stronger, more disconnected selves but in the dissolution of the self into relationship.”

So when you next look at a forest, I hope you see the trees with a bit more wonder and awe, for underneath the silence of the deep, dark woods is a group of chattering socialists sharing resources for the common good.

Monday, April 17, 2017

Preserve creation from all harm

“Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.” Human beings are deeply connected with all of creation. When we mistreat nature, we also mistreat human beings.

As individuals, we have grown comfortable with certain lifestyles shaped by a distorted culture of prosperity and a “disordered desire to consume more than what is really necessary”, and we are participants in a system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.”

A loving awareness that we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion. This in turn must translate into concrete ways of thinking and acting that are more respectful of creation. We must not think that these efforts are too small to improve our world. They “call forth a goodness which, albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread” and encourage “a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption.” Indeed, “care for nature is part of a lifestyle which includes the capacity for living together and communion”. Economics and politics, society and culture cannot be dominated by thinking only of the short-term and immediate financial or electoral gains. Instead, they urgently need to be redirected to the common good, which includes sustainability and care for creation. Changing course thus means, “keeping the original commandment to preserve creation from all harm, both for our sake and for the sake of our fellow human beings.”

If we look at the works of mercy as a whole, we see that the object of mercy is human life itself and everything it embraces.” The works of mercy also include care for our common home. As a spiritual work of mercy, care for our common home calls for a “grateful contemplation of God’s world” which “allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us”. As a corporal work of mercy, care for our common home requires “simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness” and “makes itself felt in every action that seeks to build a better world”

Excerpts, MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS

POPE FRANCIS

FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE

WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE CARE OF CREATION

1 SEPTEMBER 2016

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