Category: Trees

Nurse log, Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, California, April 2021 What does it mean to know? Where does knowledge reside in the body? Who or what has knowledge? How is knowledge transmitted and received? The answers to these questions go to the root of relationships among humans and between humans and the more-than-human world. Those …

  A week ago, I sat on a wooden bench at the edge of Elk Prairie in Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, just north of Orick, California, watching the resident herd of Roosevelt elk graze. The prairie is a huge open expanse in the middle of forest dominated by coast redwood and Sitka spruce trees, …

It’s spring in the Pacific Northwest, a time when plants that pushed leaves through near-frozen winter ground begin their promiscuous blooming. Next to the hardy hellebores, narcissus and daffodils show off their yellow bonnets. Slender willow branches, brown in winter, turn spring-green as their leaves sprout. At Lake Quinault, where we spent a few days …

When I imagine the kind of human community I want to live in, I go to the forest in my mind. In the forest, there is no analogue for racism. No exclusion of certain plants from the web of connection, nurture, and support because of their physical characteristics. That would be counter to the natural …

Underground, in the dark, the roots of trees join with fungi to form mycorrhizal networks. These networks, some larger than any other organism on Earth, including blue whales, form cooperative communities. Trees of many species link together, nourish each other, alert the others to danger, share defense strategies. Trees in sunnier spots photosynthesize extra sugar …

Early Monday morning, in clouded darkness misted by rain, two hundred people gathered at the Port of Tacoma to block the gates to a construction site. Puget Sound Energy, a utility company that is now owned by a profitable group of private equity firms, leased this land to build a huge plant to process and …

Fall Equinox is the time when the sun moves from the sign of the healer (Virgo) to the sign of the scales, balance, justice (Libra). The connection between healing and justice has never been more clear than today. President Trump and Republicans in Congress, at the behest of the billionaire donors who set their legislative …

The events of the last week in our country call forth anger, anxiety, fear, dread. What will happen next? Will our terribly unfit President finally be removed from office? Will the investigations produce the needed evidence? What will it take for those in power who support him to see how dangerous he is? Does the …

At Bealtaine we transition from the quiet, inward activities of the cold months to a vibrant focus on the world blooming around us. Bealtaine (pronounced BYAL-teh-neh in Irish), celebrated in the US as May Day, initiates the light half of the year (samos) in the Celtic calendar. Flowers lure bees and other pollinators with showy, …

As soon as the tip of my shovel cut a small crescent in our front lawn, I knew I had forgotten something important. I stopped digging and listened. The hole was for a rosebush we had bought months ago from a friend who was moving. I found the rose fertilizer, paced out the distance from …