We’ve just come through another seasonal dump of heavy snow here in Nova Scotia as I write this. I managed to dig my way out this morning with snowblower and shovel. I only use my snowblower when desperate times call for desperate measures. I prefer my shovel, telling myself I’m in a fresh air gym. It’s a use-it-or-lose-it mentality for my aging muscles.
I was taking in the beauty of the fresh frosting on the trees. It is a lovely sight, but branches sag and snap under the weight and power outages result. My dappled willow is lying almost flat from the weight of snow. I shook her branches carefully, but she hasn’t resumed her upright stature yet. Perhaps she is resting. The hemlock trees are prepared for heavy snow by design, with a bough structure that helps them shed snow to avoid winter breakage.
Such wise trees. I’ve always been a tree hugger, before I knew it was a term used to name environmentalists. I played in the forest, as did most children of my generation with the lucky circumstance of growing up in the north. I talked to the trees, believing they talked to me. On my walks here, with my dog Gracie, I paused every morning to put my arms around a giant hemlock and laid my face against her rough bark. I felt a deep comfort from that simple act.
Nova Scotia Power cut her down because she was in the way of their new power lines. With a little planning of pole placement she could have been spared, instead of being dumped in the pit, her body going to waste. As I gazed at the forest that surrounds me this morning, I considered the wisdom that nature offers that all too often we ignore and … it got me thinking.
Growth in trees is cyclical, not constant. Trees know to pause and rest before another season of growth. Dormancy is part of nature’s design. Animals rest and plants close, both honouring stillness, while humankind considers downtime a failure. There are no hoarders in nature, except maybe the squirrel who hides more nuts than he can remember, which cleverly works as a tool in natural reforestation. A tree sheds its leaves no longer needed at season’s end which serves to enrich the soil. The forest circulates what it receives, and everything thrives as a result. Predators keep populations in balance which benefits the entire ecosystem.
The simple changing of the seasons tells us there is no tragedy in our impermanence – storms come and go, forests burn and regrow. Endings are transitions that make space for what comes next. Impermanence is the engine of creation.
We dismiss the wisdom of animals and their innate warning systems. After a 9.1-magnitude undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean in 2004, 225,000 people died. Survivors noted the behaviour of animals prior to the tsunami hitting land. Elephants trumpeted and headed for high ground. Flamingoes abandoned their low-lying nesting areas. A herd of water buffalo near a coastal village in Thailand suddenly stampeded away from the shore to the top of a nearby hill several minutes before the tsunami hit.
People who followed the animals, paying heed to their warning, survived. Human-made warning systems are often ineffective, and many areas have no means to be alerted. Much research has been done on animal behaviour regarding earthquakes, with similar results across the board, showing changes in animal behaviour up to 20 hours before an earthquake. Do we listen to the warnings offered by animals?
Perhaps the most significant message in nature that we ignore at our peril is that monocultures are fragileand are not sustainable. Mixed ecosystems survive all manner of extremes. The parallel for humans is we need different perspectives, different backgrounds, different ways of thinking for problem-solving. Everything is stronger with diversity. A single species taking over an ecosystem brings it to collapse. Nature tells us that harmony, not control, creates resilience.
Indigenous cultures had a deep understanding of how diversity was essential for plants and animals to survive, for balance, and for long-term sustainability. Their traditional knowledge understood that nature was a web of relationships with each piece playing a role in maintaining balance and they too were a part of the natural world, not separate from it, and they played an active role in protecting all living things.
Transformation requires vulnerability. The caterpillar dissolves its body before becoming a butterfly. Real change may look like disaster when peering in from the outside. Maybe the uncertainty in our society, the violence and power struggle we are witness to as of late, the injustice and cruelty, is part of the process of changing how we do things, requiring our participation, not handwringing. Nature can teach us, Indigenous people can teach us, if we would only pay attention.
wendistewart@live.ca
