Baron Wormser: On a Sentence by Albert Camus
Sometimes, the illness of our world, the death-in-life that turns nature into nothing more than the source of raw material, seems so boundless that throwing the lasso of language on it seems impossible.
Michael T. Young: Two Poems
It begins not in the trees exactly
but in what they do to the light
Nidia Hernández: Refugiada | A refugee
the country in a foreign film
where I live now
I’m alone with the trees
Jim Minick: Know the Trees, One by One
Know the trees, one by one,
rough-barked, smooth, shingled, or banded,
oak, hickory, maple, or gum.
James Crews: Berrypicking On the Dexter Trail
I see how the bulldozers that disfigured
this land, and removed the mossy,
old-growth maples, also made room
for black raspberry bushes to fill out
and fruit, ripeness reaching for my hands.
Video: Between Earth & Sky
Renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni studies “what grows back” after a disturbance in the rainforest canopy. In 2015, her rope snapped on a research climb, and she fell fifty feet from a tree and nearly died. After making a miraculous recovery, Nalini begins to explore a new research subject – herself.
Michael Kleber-Diggs: The Grove
Planted here as we are, see how we want
to bow and sway with the motion of earth
in sky.
Matthew J. Parker: Tree Huggers’ Last Stand
Our backyard in Connecticut was bordered by a nature preserve, of sorts – 422 acres of wilderness camouflaging an ammunition dump.
Richard Foerster: Aspens
This morning three trees lay felled,
the roots exposed like hacked bones
in opened graves.
Video: How to harness the ancient partnership between forests and fungi
If we want to better understand the environment and combat climate change, we need to look deep underground, where diverse microscopic fungal networks mingle with tree roots to form symbiotic partnerships, says microbiologist Colin Averill.
Alex Craven: The Climate Solution Standing Right in Front of Us — Mature and Old-Growth Forests
It’s not enough to solely reduce emissions; we must also sequester and store carbon.
Michael Simms: Elderberry Magic
In the Native American tradition, the elder is sacred. The soft whistling song I often hear in the branches has been heard by others as well. Elder’s long association with wind instruments suggests that the magical sound comes not from the wind but rather from the tree itself, as well as any instruments carved from elder branches.
Charlotte Mew: The Trees Are Down
They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.
For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall
Megan Merchant / Luke Johnson: Origin Story (An Epistolary Dialogue)
From our window, grosbeaks
and buntings tangle into flight. The hours count
earlier now, because of the way they are lit.
