READING: What a fascinating book, the connective life of trees. It is revealing, yet so obvious, to see how a supportive community seems to be the standard across nature, rather than the lone delusional/dysfunctional human male fantasy of survival of the fittest/tooth and claw. Supportive/connective/inclusive communities are definitely the way forward as a means of long-term survival.

Books I Read in 2023

#29 - The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, by Peter Wohlleben, translated by Jane Billinghurst

Rating: 2/5 stars

I love trees and I love science, but I was really disappointed by this book. Somehow the pace was both incredibly slow, and too fast--the chapters were short and choppy, seeming to end in the middle of an idea without exploring it fully, yet the style of the writing was so precious and meandering that it also took forever to get to the point. The preciousness of the style was my real sticking point. I get that for a layman's book about a scientific topic, there has to be some generalization, even if I shuddered a little at lines describing how trees' branches grow in a certain way, as if the thousands upon thousands of different tree species all had the same branch growth pattern, which they most certainly do not. But referring to groups of species as "Beeches + Co." or "Spruces + Co." constantly was grating. (To be fair, I don't know if this is a stylistic quirk of the author, or of the translator, because I read this in English and I don't speak German, so I don't know if these bits are direct translations or idiomatic ones. Maybe it would be less annoying in German.) This is the easiest single example for me to point to, but there were plenty of other moments that made me cringe internally, and the overall tone of the text felt like a warm and kindly grandfather talking down to a child he thought might be a bit dumb. I gave this a second star despite disliking the tone because this is a nonfiction book and I did learn some things I didn't know about trees. But nothing I would want to speak authoritatively about in any but the most casual contexts, because with the generalization and dumbing-down, I would want to study any of these new things more deeply through other sources before I could claim I knew what I was talking about.

Reading The Hidden Life of Trees near a forest is really interesting because I can observe the trees based on information in the book.

Emma Watson, (Goodreads Account)

—The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World, Peter Wohlleben (2015)

I have two chinese lucky bamboo plants at my mum's and I decided to take one to my place (aiming to take the other next commute) but their roots were so entwined I think I felt some echo of their pain being seperated as I pulled them apart. now I have one here on my bookshelf facing the window and it's all alone and the leaves are going yellow and droopy and I think it's because it's heartbroken.

Peter Wohlleben says plants nowadays have mostly forgotten how to talk to one another and retreated too far into themselves. I keep wondering if their roots will know where to reattach to each when they meet again or if I've severed their connection permanently so they will forget how.

Tim Flannery in The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

plants are so fascinating omg

trees and plants of all sorts send out distress signals to other plants in response to threat :o

Is it possible to read a non-fiction book without having some kind of crisis about the subject matter because personal experience tells me no

Yesterday morning-- while I was supposed to be on my work laptop processing data, while the employer was sending emails about office closure due to snow and everyone has to telework, while the union was sending emails insisting that nobody is expected to telework, and I was staying out of the debacle by scraping snow off my car --my neighbor waved me down and asked me if I had hot water.

There's hot water after 6 pm, I said. The heat doesn't go over 58, he said. I agreed. We're all sick of it, he said. I nodded. I said, I've got a maintenance ticket in. Our other neighbor calls them twice a day, I said. They tell each of us that we're the only one complaining. Let's flood the state office with complaints, he said. Let's get mad together.

Church people blowing up my email box about plowing and shoveling and salt. Someone get out there, what's the status, can we park, who's doing something, I'm too busy, when did we decide we're closed, the Board wasn't asked, what's happening, this is unacceptable, why wasn't I told, someone post an update on facebook, this is what we're doing, we didn't agree to this. One of them left me a panicked voicemail asking me if someone could join zoom if they're not in the church building.

I put on headphones and listened to The Hidden Life of Trees.

Sometimes I feel like mycelium: the fungus in the dark, connecting the roots of all these trees who are at the same time supporting each other and battling for dominance and blaming each other for their misfortunes and mourning each other's tragedy. I don't mind webbing the soil for everyone else in their rise toward the canopy. They're supporting me, too, even when they don't realize it.

This forest is loud. It's the only way we all survive.

“With their voracious appetites, sap-sucking pests remove a gigantic quantity of nutrients from trees. Per square yard of forest, the tiny pests can tap many hundreds of tons of pure sugar from the trees—sugar the trees can no longer use to grow or set aside in reserve for the coming year.

For many animals, however, sap-sucking pests such as aphids are a blessing. … Then there are forest ants, which love the honeydew the aphids excrete so much that they slurp it up right from the aphids’ backsides. To speed up the process, the ants stroke the aphids with their antennae, stimulating them to excrete the honeydew. And to prevent other opportunists from entertaining the idea of eating the ants’ valuable aphid colonies, the ants protect them.”

—The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben

Five Truths I Learned about God, Life, and Myself in an Aspen Grove

Five Truths I Learned about God, Life, and Myself in an Aspen Grove

I’m bewitched by aspen trees. Have been for years. They are complex, moody creatures. Their dark eyes are windows into watchful souls. And seem to peer into mine. Their quaking leaves respond to God’s slightest breath; their canopies provide sun-dappled, unsmothering shade; their bark produces a natural sunscreen. And their eerie, shifting beauty is matchless, poetic. Remarkably I’ve learned…

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If you look closely, you can see a different universe.

Recycled

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Olesya Rulin, (Instagram Stories, N/A)

—The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World, Peter Wohlleben (2015)

Happy birthday, Terrence Malick! [Nov. 30, 1943] 🌿 · Badlands (1973) · Days of Heaven (1978) · The Thin Red Line (1998) · The New World (2005) · The Tree of Life (2011) · To the Wonder (2012) · Knight of Cups (2015) · Song to Song (2017) · Voyage of Time (2016) · A Hidden Life (2019)

merboy and bird(bad)boy <3