Friday, June 23, 2023

Speaking with trees

 


I had a dream in which a young man asked me if I had “done enough”?

The question saddened me deeply, depressed me, and I was forced to ask what had I done?

When I woke up, the dream stayed on. Lists were forming. Driving me awake. I had to grab paper and pencil.

The first list was short and apart from the obvious, like joining environmental groups, planting native trees and shrubs, pulling invasive species from native forest areas, picking up rubbish and talking to the unconvinced, not much.

A bigger list came to me, full of things I had not done.

But first, there was another question: Why can’t most people hear the trees crying?

I knew the origins of it. On a long drive south to Kinjarling (Albany) from Walyalup (Fremantle), I listened to an interview with Veronique Tadjo who wrote a novel - In the Company of Men - from a novel perspective: Tadjo gives voices to creatures that inhabit West Africa and, in particular, to an ancient tree.

Between 2014 and 2016, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone suffered the world’s worst Ebola outbreak. Tadjo’s novel covers the events in brutal detail. In the Company of Men has not yet been released but after listening to her interview and reading early reviews, it is obvious that a major thread in the work is that viruses like Ebola and humans have much in common – both cannot stop their inner drives. They live of their hosts, and at the same time they destroy them.

She wanted a voice that knew humans longer than humans had known humans, and it makes sense when you remember that what is left of the Australian bush is packed with trees, like Huon Pines and Balgas, that have been around longer than the colonials and those who followed.

And so I thought of the trees I loved, and tried to find their voices.

And that was when one of them asked: Can’t you hear us crying?

            Don’t you know we are sick?

            Of the loss of habitat.

            The loss of family.

            The loss of the insects that feed of us and give life to others at the                     same time.

            Of the decline in bird numbers, even those that you all think are                        forever birds, like the koorlbardi, the djitty djitty, the karrak.

            Of invasive species of all types.

            Especially you people.

            More and more often with machines.

            And every year with incendiary devices to set of wildfires that burn us             on-mass, to cinders.

            And you, people, you have forgotten that time before when you                           looked to us, for shelter, for food, and you prayed to our spirit.

Now we are nothing to you, just another thing, like plastic, like curios. And one day soon you will house us like all your curios, behind high walls, with gates, and you will sell tickets to the curious.

          But then it will be too late and, like the Ebola virus, you will have                       destroyed everything that sustains you.

And now, here is another list, for further reading.

In the Company of Men

https://www.amazon.com.au/Company-Men-V%C3%A9ronique-Tadjo/dp/1635420954

Gum: The story of eucalypts & their champions

https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/gum-131849/

The Heartbeat of Trees

https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/heartbeat-trees

The Hidden Life of Trees

https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/hidden-life-trees


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