Stephanie Kaza - Conversations with trees : an intimate ecology

I N THE EARLY 1990S , WHEN I FIRST WROTE THESE essays, I was pulled by a powerful call from the trees to listen, to hear their stories, to be in their presence. I didnt know where that call would take me, but I trusted my intuition to follow. I was led to many ancient and grand beings who offered unforgettable experiences of communion. I also had to face difficult questions and troubling concerns that arose in the company of trees. Since that time, a number of the trees I wrote about have perished in dramatic but completely natural ways. The Grand Dragon Oak lost a major trunk and crashed in pieces into the canyon below. The big madrones companion tan oak at Cloud Mountain dropped its crown in a fierce storm and collapsed to disease and weathering. The Monterey pines at Muir Beach suffered attacks by pine bark beetles, and many had to be removed as neighborhood hazards. Most recently, the unusually large manzanitas at Pepperwood Ranch went up in a hellfire of flame during the Tubbs fire of 2018.

These individual stories reflect changing conditions for trees and forests throughout the west coast of North America. In the last few decades, droughts have become more severe and drawn out, snapping even sturdy trees under water stress. Forest fires are burning hotter and more erratically, jumping canyons and fire lines faster than they can be contained. Bark beetle infestations in the Sierra Nevada have claimed the lives of millions of ponderosa, lodgepole, Jeffrey, and sugar pines, turning mountainsides into ghost lands. Urban forests in such iconic tree cities as Portland, Oregon, are losing ground to rapid development, creating heat islands from reduced shade. All of these impacts are tied to climate change and the steady warming of the planet. It is true that forests have changed radically under earlier periods of climate change. But todays levels of greenhouse gases are the highest in forest history, and this round of climate change may prove to be shocking beyond our predictions.

In the midst of all this, it is heartening that so much more is known now about the hidden life of trees. There are more books and blogs on trees, more memoirs and novels, more nature writing and personal reflection, and thus more readers engaged with tree stories. The reports of tree communication via symbiotic fungi and complex root networks have given scientific support to something many people have sensed for a long time: Trees talk to each other! They share information about soil and weather conditions; they alert each other to beetle attacks. They function as communities more than as individuals. All this seems astonishing, but only because it breaks through our mainstream view of trees as objects for human use.

Since the first edition of these tree stories was published, I spent twenty-four years teaching at the University of Vermont as a professor of environmental studies. There I developed my scholarship and writing on Buddhist environmental thought and further engaged the natural world from a contemplative perspective. Though I learned the East Coast trees and delighted in the maple and hemlock forests of Vermont, I often longed for my West Coast trees, with whom I felt so much more at home. When it came time to complete my university service, I again felt the powerful call from the trees. We headed west to settle in Portland, Oregon, among the towering Douglas firs of Cascadia. Now my bookshelves are lined with field guides of the Pacific Northwest, and I am learning how volcanic action, glaciation, ice age floods, fire, and climate have shaped these landscapes. I am back with my tree tribes and deeply grateful for their company once again.

And not a moment too soon, it seems. With climate change accelerating and national politics precarious, the future of the planet is at stake in a frightening way. Global warming has forced feedback systems in soils and forests into overdrive, and pollution from atmospheric carbon continues to rise. As forest cover shrinks due to agriculture, timber cutting, and urban development, forest species are disappearing all over the world. All the best efforts in conservation biology and ecological restoration have not kept up with the economic and social pressures on the forests. Many people speak of a dark despair, sensing the planet is under unacceptable levels of assault. Not only forests are suffering, but we too, as human populations, are meeting great suffering from disease, toxins, overheating, lack of water, and conflicts over resources.

In this context, what can a book such as this offer in todays world? How can a book make a difference against the relentless destructive forces that seem to be taking the planet into a dark time? I see this writing as a call for reflection, for clear seeing, an invitation to intimacy. Being with trees is a return to soul, an offering of refuge. These essays provide a place to recover from the sense of anguish and discouragement that comes in waves and erodes resilience. In my own investigations with trees, I seek a deeper truth of relationship, of reunion; I am looking for a better future for human-tree relations. I know it is possible. I am not alone in my seeking.

The themes in this book are still vital and important today: the role of stories and storytelling, the place of trees as wisdom keepers, the confrontation with the killing mind. It still makes sense to go on pilgrimage to trees with open hands and heart. I still carry my questions to trees, and I want to knowBristlecone pines, how are you enduring? Fire-scarred bays, how will you recover? Beetle-eaten whitebarks, what will it take for you to survive? There are so many stories to be uncoveredof loss and destruction, of tree planting and recovery, of communities falling in love with their trees. When I first shared these tree stories in public, many people came up to share their own tree stories with me, looking for affirmation that they were not crazy for what they had experienced, for what they knew in their bodies and hearts. Now, twenty-five years later, the times are so much more receptive to tree stories. This is a really good thing; we need all the tree stories and tree friends we can find. These wisdom keepers have quite a lot still left to share with us newcomers on the planet.