If only breaking hearts could stop fires

Deep in the Nantahala National Forest, due west of Robbinsville, resides a forest that is special and ancient.  In fact it is special, because it is ancient.  In the U.S. when we think of “old growth forests” we envision forests of giant redwoods and sequoias on the West Coast, forests that have not been severely disturbed in hundreds, even thousands of years.  We do not think of forests on the East Coast, largely because so few old growth forests are left on this side of the North American continent.  However, in the Nantahala National Forest, a few pockets of old growth forest remain, and among these “pockets” is Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest.   

I have been to Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest twice in my life, my visits separated by a decade respectively.  On both visits I remember feeling transported to a different world.  Indeed very few experiences can be equated to walking through an old growth forest.  It most closely resembles walking through a cathedral without the dust and stale recycled holy air.  It should be no surprise to anyone, thus, why and how Gaudi was inspired by forests and trees when he built La Sagrada Familia. Birds passing through the forest sing, their echoes weaving in and out of large tree trunks the size of small cars.  Stately trunk pillars hold up the sky and sunlight filtering through the trunks set aglow the wings of small insects that dance in between the shadows.  Underfoot is a carpet of greenery composed of hundreds of species of wildflowers, mosses, and ferns.  Very little life occupies the space between ground and towering ancient poplar trees, save a few understory trees scattered about.  It is this latter feature that makes the old growth forests of Joyce Kilmer so different from many other forests on the East Coast.  Most younger forests are thick with vegetation in the shrub and understory layers, so thick in fact that often small native forbs and wildflowers have a difficult time establishing for lack of sunlight reaching the forest floor.  The composition and structure of most younger forests are the result of invasion by non-native species, by fire suppression, or both.  Because of these factors, increasingly we live in a world, where forests are looking more the same than different.  However, in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest we can at least get a glimpse of the past, what forests used to be, how they sounded and felt, how they inspired cathedrals, how they spoke to the existence of something or someone greater than ourselves. 

In light of recent news about the wildfires in Australia, I find myself reflecting on my walks through Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. Right now wildfires are consuming pockets of ancient Gondwana Rainforest, forests that once burned, we will never get back for thousands of years, if ever.  My heart breaks for the species that will be lost in these fires.  My heart also breaks for each individual life lost, little and large, from the small unassuming insect to the largest ancient tree, who knew of her death days before the fires reached her canopy and waited nobly for her end via flaming scythe.  If only breaking hearts could stop fires.  The fires rage on, and scientists scorn the Australian government, saying “I told you so.”  Climate change has made the droughts more severe, and the fire season too.  “We warned you about this,” they say.  “This is why we have to address climate change, to arrest the warming, reduce the risk of burning.” And yet here we are.  As sad as it is, the koalas suffering in these fires may be one of our greatest hopes for the future.  Videos of koalas affected by the fires have broken many hearts, at least the YouTube views and comments tell me so.  Koalas may be our new poster child for climate change and wildfires, as polar bears have been for climate change and melting ice caps.  What a great cost for a poster child.  Yet now with a face to the devastation, maybe we will pay attention, maybe we will care?  Maybe koalas will help us save our forests, ancient and new, from severe destructive fires in our future.  We can only hope that we will now be a better version of ourselves, if not for the ancient trees of old growth forests that support hundreds of little lives, then maybe for the koalas. 

Courtesy of Nathan Edwards/Getty Images

Each day of the Australian wildfires makes me ache for a walk in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest.  I want to visit, like I want to visit an old homestead that I know will be bulldozed tomorrow.  I want to see it one last time before the wildfires come, as I fear they may one day. And yet I also want to visit that special and ancient pocket of forest like I want to visit a grandmother… to be reassured that life is older than humans and will persist with or without us.  I am comforted knowing that we are outlived on this planet by the trees.  And I have hope, the kind of hope that can only come from a broken place, that we will be better and that our koala friends will help us find our better existence. 

Desert Rain

The smell of a desert after a rain fills the soul with an inexpressible, unfathomable hope.  I wish words could give it justice.  I only know of this experience in one desert landscape: Tucson, AZ.  Months without a single drop of rain makes the ground impermeable to the first drops of what Arizonans call the “monsoon season.”  The ground, deprived of water for so long, cannot accept the love that the heavens bring.  Raindrops bounce off the surface of the soil, like a tennis ball bouncing off the court.  This phenomenon will go on for long minutes, maybe hours, until the ground can no longer ward off the overwhelming waters of the skies.  At some point the soil has to accept the waters, and eventually with steady persistence, the water of the heavens finds its way into the soul of the desert. 

When I was 22, I moved to Tucson.  I first arrived in Tucson directly after one such monsoon rain.  Stepping out of the airport doors, I was greeted by an oppressive humidity with which I was all too familiar.  Having been acclimated to the humidity of the Southeastern U.S., it felt like home, and, so understandably I was quite confused.  I had been warned of the “dry heat” of the desert, the low humidity that makes you drink water like a fish, and the heat of a sun that makes you believe in the powerful wrath of God.  I was not expecting this.  When I arrived in the house, where I was to live for a year, the Santa Cruz River out back was flowing quickly with waters, like NC Mountain white water rapids.  There was greenery, there were flowers, and there was life.

The waters and humidity, however, did not last long.  Within days I was drying out like a towel left on the line too long and the river vanished like a ghost into the Southern horizon.  All that was left of the river’s existence was an indentation on the land and a sandy river bottom that suggested memories of a river that once flowed freely and vigorously.   Most of the year I discovered the riverbed served many other purposes outside of transporting water from one place of high elevation to another.  It served as a greenway on which athletes trained. It served as a dog park.  It even served as a horse training facility for one particularly suave black cowboy, who liked to sweet talk the ladies passing by on the path adjacent to the river.  The riverbed also served as a migrant transport corridor.  Border patrol was known from time to time to fly helicopters over the riverbed in search of migrants crossing the border.  One night on the path by the riverbed a Border Patrol helicopter slowed over my head to do, what I can only assume, was a quick profile.  However, the PBR and the jorts must have tipped them off.  “Nope just a hipster,” they must have thought as they continued on their Northern journey along the riverbed. Surely the riverbed was always lively- both with and without its waters. 

The dryness of the Tucson desert births only the greatest and most tenacious of survivors, many of which have spines.  Cacti are prolific and only mesquite trees rival them on the landscape.  Spines are the ‘stuff’ of survivors because they conserve water.  Spines are modified leaves designed to reduce surface area and loss of water through evapotranspiration.  Cacti spines, however, also serve as a reproduction mechanism and a defense against animals, not excluding the most unassuming of these – humans.  The great saguaro cacti of the Tucson desert are the tamer of her cacti brethren.  Jumping cholla cacti are also omnipresent.  Although cholla do not actually “jump” per say, they have readily detachable bits that hitch rides on hikers and other animals to aid in vegetative propagation.  A painful and proactive flora that loves the company of strangers.

Cacti spines and the desert soil are testaments to the power of water and the spirits of her offspring – life.  Everything about the desert screams paranoia and distrust.  The desert is not too dissimilar from a distrustful soul that has been tortured by life’s greatest tragedies. The monsoon season is a large reason why the Sonoran desert of Tucson is so beautiful and unique.  The quantity of rainfall and its timing define the landscape.  It is the reason for the Saguaro cacti and the mesquite.  Without it, the Sonoran desert is a nameless faceless and empty place.  As if water were love, water gives the Sonoran desert its identity and fate.  It defines its being and its going. 

I find myself at times feeling desert-like.  I suppose I feel this now; hence, why I write today.  There are times I feel such a great sadness about our world that I don’t have the energy to let any love into my heart.  There are times I get angry at myself.  There are times I get angry at the injustice that life deals those I love.  There are times that I just don’t want to be anything but a hard surface on which all interaction and emotion bounces.  These are times that I envy the desert soil.

Sometimes I am a desert soil.  I think we all have this mode of action- or inaction rather.  It’s as if we shut down, and I believe it’s as real and human as the human-like stature of a Saguaro cacti.  However, I have come to realize that lasting too long in this state is also an injustice of a different kind.  The universe put me together just in this way for some purpose.  At the very least, I serve an ecological niche or else I would not be here.  I have purpose.  I have soul.  I am.  And so, I will be.  No.  It is true. My species does not depend on whether I am here or not.  But it would be a great waste of energy and the way this universe put me together to be a nameless desert soil.  Although I am not special, I am unique.  I am defined by who I am every time I accept love, every time I accept the waters of this life.  If the desert soils of Tucson’s Sonoran desert were to reject the waters of this coming monsoon season, it would cease to be a Sonoran desert.  I am the love I receive.  We all are. 

And so friends, I say, be a desert soil if you have to be, but just for a moment.  Be still, but just for a short while.  For we have love to give you and life to share.  We carry water for your parched earth.  May it be together that we make the species of our better tomorrow.

The Fires of Our Hearts

In the fall of 2016 fires erupted across the Southeast, scorching well-known cities, such as Gatlinburg, TN and Hendersonville, NC.  The old spirits of the Appalachian Mountains were enraged, sparring off in their ageless and epic battle with man.  Although safe in the confines of my North Carolina Piedmont, the neighbor mountain fires quickly evolved into something more, a personal metaphor for death and life - young and old.   A dear friend passed away that winter and an uncontrollable fire of despair and sadness overcame my community. I entered 2017 with a heavy heart, haunted by ghosts of a future that would never be and worried by life’s great Fire that could consume us all.

As an ecologist in training, I have learned a great deal about fire systems in the forests of the Southeast.  Most notable of these systems is the longleaf pine forest, an ecosystem entirely dependent on frequent fires.  Longleaf pine seeds take root when small frequent brush fires clear the ground of debris and other competing tree species that may otherwise deter their successful establishment.  Once a longleaf pine is established, it forms as a small pom-pom on the ground.  In this state, a dense packing of pine needles around the sensitive terminal bud protects the young longleaf pine from extreme temperatures, fire, and heat.  When ready, a process that can take a number of years once the small pom-pom has grown a deep taproot, the pine will experience a growth spurt not too unlike a human teenager.  Within a few seasons the longleaf pom-pom will quickly grow from its “grass” state to 8 feet, a height tall enough to allow the terminal bud of the tree to escape the frequent brush fires that occur in the forest.  From there the tree will continue to grow its way up toward the light of the canopy, all the while being supported by its deep tap root that it took such care to develop in its earliest years.

The frequent small brush fires of the longleaf pine forests are not just beneficial for the longleaf pine trees, however.  They also support a wide variety of other flora and fauna.  Wildflowers depend on the frequent brush fires to reproduce.  Wiregrass, a hearty unassuming grass that otherwise might not be given much thought, is also largely abundant in longleaf pine forests and is integral in keeping fires contained and less intense.  Wiregrass populates the longleaf pine forests, like crabgrass in the annoyed gardener’s flowerbed.  This humble species of vegetation keeps fire from charring the soil and provides for a quick burn that can be more painlessly extinguished by the rains of heaven.  Although a longleaf forest floor can look depressing soon after a burn, given a little time, the forest will repopulate with more wildflowers and colors than it ever had before.  A longleaf pine meadow a few seasons removed from the last fire is a rare sight to behold, and undeniably a natural wonder of the South.  However, as with most ecological tales, there is a caveat, a conflict created by none other than the species of Shakespeare.

Humans have severely altered the frequent fire regimes of the longleaf pine forests.  For generations in the South we have suppressed fires to both the detriment of our forests and the identity of ourselves as a Southern people.  As a result of fire suppression, longleaf pine forests have transitioned into dense mixed pine-hardwood forests.  Without fire, longleaf pine seeds cannot establish in the forest soil or outcompete the faster growing loblolly pines, sweetgum, and red maples. 

Courtesy of Joseph Jones Ecological Research Station

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fire will come into our lives whether we approve of its presence or not, whether we anticipate it or not.  And so it goes with the forests that were historically longleaf pine.  Fire will happen.  And now that the forests have lived years without fire, they have developed ladder fuels that feed fire from soil to canopy.  In the absence of frequent fire, forests now burn with the intensity of the 100-year fire that can threaten the livelihood of all forest life.  Whereas before the longleaf pine forests had brush fires that never reached the tree canopy, now forests have fire fuel distributed throughout all layers of the forest.  Forest fires as intense as the ones that happened in the Appalachian Mountains last fall, as well as those common in transitioned longleaf pine forests, can scorch the very ground on which our beloved wildflowers grow.  They can alter the future of a forest forever, rob it of its life routine, change its identity, and transform its very function in the world.

Although longleaf pine forests are restricted to the coastal plains of the Southeast, their story is shared with forests everywhere.  Many forests in the U.S. are acclimated to some level of forest fire frequency, and without frequent fire they risk having their identities entirely altered by one really hot, really intense burn. Unfortunately, the forest fires of the Appalachian Mountains this past fall were of the really hot and really intense variety. It is unclear what these forest will become in the future or how we will define the constitution of their new being.

My friend who passed this winter was the husband of my best friend.  He was beautiful and kind.  I knew him to be everything I hoped to be as a partner, a friend, and an actor in this life.  I am devastated by his loss.  However the reality that haunts me more than his loss in my life, is his loss in my friend’s life.  I have been hard pressed to find two more compatible souls.  Losing him was like losing a part of my friend.  I watch now as my friend tries to continue life without her chosen partner of this existence. My heart breaks for her everyday.  She is searching for new meaning and new identity.  She is a forest that has been scorched to its earth. 

We all experience life’s forest fires.  Sometimes the fires help us grow more brilliantly than ever before. Sometimes the fires fill our meadows with meadow beauty and butterfly pea.  But sometimes the fires are all too harsh.  Sometimes they are so intense they make us into something new, something unknown, something entirely different than what we ever used to know.  I do not know what this fire means for my dear friend.  I know she hurts, and I know the healing will take the rest of this lifetime.  But I have hope that she will be okay.  That she will be made into something different but beautiful, that her taproot has made her strong and that she will be made stronger in the enduring. 

To those who have lost, may you be in this new place and this new existence, and may you live – reaching forever toward the light in the canopy, the better version of yourself.  May your scorched earth be the rebirth of something beautiful and something new.  May you always honor Fire’s shadows, beware of the tragedy she can bring, and rejoice in the moments of her absence.  May you always be motivated by those souls that make you feel like your most authentic and alive self.  To you my friend, endless light and love.  May the fires spare you this day and may your healing be the most spectacular and colorful natural wonder the world has ever seen.

The Stars We Used To Know

Under the stars this night
The world seems crueler
We are small, yes
But not meaningless

The haughty stars
Mock my hopefulness
And I glare at them
With the might
Of ants against their giants

There was a time
When the starlight
Fed my dreams
And moonshadows
Formed the figures
Of my Future

But tonight these stars
Are cruel brutes
Insensitive to the pain
Their timelessness brings

Yet in this night
Cloaked in the
Dark of my anger
I find a peace

Her presence is small
But her fate mighty
She walks around me
She is the Life
The Breath of my Betters
And my Beings

Her presence
Will light the path
Of my new Living

And so tonight I yell
Into a nothingness
With the hope
Of all I have
Of all that is
This precious existence.

Learning how to age with trees

Somewhere around the age of 27 my parents got old.  I’m not quite sure exactly how and when it happened. I was visiting home for the Thanksgiving holiday when I noticed the gray in my dad’s beard.  As if over night, the gray had spread to every hair on his chin and head.  Of course, the graying process had been going on for some time, but it was that Thanksgiving I noticed it.  A great sadness came over me, and an anxiety set in that has since never left. 

If we are lucky, we live blissfully unaware of the devastation that time can wreck on our heart and souls for many years.  With the exception of our pets, who share a seventh or eighth of our life, many of the humans in our lives stay with us for a considerable amount of our time on this earth. And we hope those humans closest to us will share all of our time on this earth.  But time can be cruel.  It both giveth and taketh away. 

We cope with the aging process in different ways.  Some of us look to the timelessness of human-contrived things, like music or art.  While others look to the natural world.  We grasp on to starry night skies, oceans, or mountains, anything that will anchor us in this time and place and keep us from uncontrollably flying off into the dark abyss of the time-space continuum.

My anchor has always been trees.

Since a little girl I have regarded trees as magical beasts.  Many of them outlive us, and they gracefully observe the passage of our existence.  My childhood home was surrounded by old red oaks.  I grew up under those red oaks.  I played “catch the leaf” under them in the autumn.  I cried under them, I played under them, I lived under them.  They were as constant as the load-bearing walls in our home, holding up the forest and sky.  They were the stage of my being for many years.  During the early years we would have strangers knock on our door to share stories about the largest of the red oaks in the back.  One older woman reminisced with my dad about family reunions under that tree.  It was a treasure, a constant.  Of course trees do not live forever, and a few times we had trees struck by lightning.  We lived on one of the tallest hills south of Atlanta, and the lightning could not resist our closeness to its resident clouds.  We lost three beautiful red oaks in my childhood, and each one was a true loss.  Their removals made us feel naked, as if a piece of our home had been taken away by God himself. 

However, the majority of those red oaks, water oaks, and Pecan trees too stood the test of time, at least in my 30 years of living on North Davis Drive.  They were there when I discovered my passion for nature, when I prevailed through the awkward years of puberty, when I went off to college, when I came home from college (unemployed), and when I got married.  Those dear trees never left me.  They were there through the biggest of life changes.  They have anchored me at my most vulnerable. 

I could make this essay about how noble a creature I consider the tree.  I could tell you that they are selfless and giving.  I could tell you that one mature tree provides enough oxygen on which two humans can subsist for a year.  I could tell you that I often do not think we as humans deserve trees.  But this essay is not about what trees can do for us and how we should feel little in their presence.  Rather this is an essay about how trees and nature can be celebrated for the life and sanity they provide us in our most vulnerable of times – how trees have, at the very least, been my sanity through watching my parents age and a changing world.

I am preparing for my next visit to see my folks.  I have Christmas presents wrapped and cookies baked.  I am thrilled to see their faces when we walk into their home, exhausted and irritable from the trip down I-40 in holiday traffic.  They will welcome us with open arms into their new home in the North Carolina mountains.  It will be the first Christmas celebrated in their new house, and I will not have my familiar trees to keep me company.  However, I plan to make friends with the new trees in their backyard.  Their presence will be a reminder of nature’s protracted time and in that reality I will find comfort.  I will see the white of my dad’s beard and the unsteadiness of his gate, and I will feel comfort.  For his aging is not too unlike a tree’s.  He is embarking on “mature tree” status when it gets harder to recover from wounds and the common flu.  It will be more difficult for him to bounce back from life’s trials.  But his roots are strong and they have a lasting stronghold on my heart.  He may be unsteady in the wind, but I will be here to be his crutch.  And when it is all too much, when the tree analogies only make the hurt of aging loved ones harsher, then I will simply take a walk in the woods.  For it is there I will find the peace of nature and her constant.  It is there I will be anchored on this earth and comforted in the pain and fear that time can so harshly give.  In time’s taking, my walk among the trees will be my giving.  And together somehow we will be made stronger in the aging. 

To my trees that always give, I love you.  And to time, who can threaten to take so much away, I honor you and will grace your presence with sturdy heart.  May my roots be the witness of my loving and my enduring.