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  • Listening to the Trees: Seven Words on the Coronavirus
  • Belden C. Lane (bio)

For twenty-five years I’ve had a practice of praying with a 100-year-old cottonwood tree in the park across the street from my house. I call him Grandfather. As his leaves rustle in the wind in this time of crisis, I’ve imagined what he might be saying to the human community on behalf of the forests of the world.


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Photo courtesy of Jim Taylor.

1. We’re in this together

You aren’t alone. Trees neither catch nor carry the virus, but we stand alongside you nonetheless. We’re all part of a single-family, the body of Christ. We’re like the forty-seven thousand trees that make up an aspen grove in central Utah, spread over two hundred acres. What seems to be a small forest is actually a single organism. Every tree is genetically alike, sharing a common root system. That’s a good image for the entire earth community right now.

It’s good to think of ourselves as integral parts of a large family unit—a superorganism. When we gracefully interact within that wider whole, new emergent behaviors—a new beauty—appears that hadn’t been there before. You see it in a swirling flock of larks or a churning school of fish. A little gesture here or there shifts the entire system in unpredictable ways. What happens out on the edge reverberates throughout the whole, changing everything.

Every act of generosity and care that you exercise in this time has a greater effect than you imagine. Once you identify yourselves as part of a global household, you’ll be more sensitive to every shifting need within the system. Trees can introduce you to this vast symbiotic mystery. [End Page 137]

2. Spend time with a tree

In times of fear and loneliness people find an unexpected solace among trees. In the desert of Beersheba, a distraught Elijah discovered hope under the shade of a broom tree. Anne Frank was sustained by a horse chestnut tree she could see from her attic window in Amsterdam. Victor Frankl tells of a dying woman at Auschwitz finding comfort in the blossoms of a tree outside her barracks.

E. O. Wilson’s theory of biophilia says that human beings are genetically programmed to have an affiliation with trees and all the rest of nature. We belong to each other. In Norse creation myths, the first man and woman were formed from the dying stumps of ash and elm trees. Trees are referenced in the Bible more than any other creature in the natural world.

For centuries they have been honored for their healing, medicinal properties. In India, the neem or lilac tree served as the “village pharmacy.” People used its leaves and sap for various skin and respiratory conditions. The bark of alder and willow trees has anti-inflammatory and fever-reducing qualities. The Lakota people consider the wind rustling in cottonwood leaves as soul-healing in itself.

3. Notice how trees care for each other

Given your current need for “social distancing,” there’s much to be learned from trees. They regularly communicate with each other from a distance, sharing information and nutrients along underground fungal networks connecting their roots. These allow the trees to transfer water, nitrogen, and carbon as needed. Old cedar trees share nutrients with younger ones. A Douglas fir may even support a sickly paper birch nearby. In this “wood-wide web,” hub trees reach out to nurture a deeply interrelated community.

Trees reach out to others in their heights as well. Thirty stories up, the canopies of redwood trees provide a habitat for a hidden world of epiphyte species—ferns, mosses, and liverworts. The generosity of trees is endless. Even in dying, they care for each other. Fallen trees become nurse logs that provide garden beds for young seedlings. Ninety percent of Sitka spruce trees on the Washington coast grow directly out of their decaying grandparents.

4. Remember that trees are survivors

Old trees carry the memory of suffering borne by humans and trees alike. Think of the...

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