the language of trees

For years, I’ve been trying to learn the language of forests. I’ve stood at the base of california’s redwoods and the birch trees of northern minnesota, oregon’s old growth forests and the world’s largest sitka spruce in washington, looking up to the canopy, hoping if I listen closely enough, the wisdom of these ancient ecosystems will speak back to me.

Slowly I’ve started to hear not just birds, but thousands of different calls, and not just bubbling streams, but baby salmon swimming back to the ocean, and the quiet footsteps of deer behind me, and how the sound of wind through the tree tops shifts as the leaves change. I’m still learning this language, but I know it exists, because I’ve also stood on a hillside that once was a forest, freshly clear cut, and it was silent.

In times when it feels like our forests are being spoken about as commodities, not valued for what they give us as places rich with life and learning, reciprocity and balance, I turn again and again to the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer - “the land knows you, even when you are lost”