CROWN SHYNESS

Fente de timidité entre les arbres

Growing up on the plains, I didn't spend much time in the forests of Saskatchewan, so what I know is from being a tourist to BC, the Rockies, European forests, and mostly the Canadian shield of Quebec and Ontario. Turns out that what not all that I see has just grown out of the ancient past. Mostly I walk in wooded parks that have been planted in the last 50 years, with a few scattered ancient trees amongst younger ones. It's been a rare walk that I took in an old growth forest, and many years ago. I wonder what they look like now.

A dear friend recommended a book called The Hidden Life of Trees. It's quite an astonishing book written by a man who spent his whole life in forests, first as part of an industry, and then as a conservationist. It's not an easy read, as most of us have never had the luxury of being in an ancient forest like he describes. 

The society of trees that Peter Wohlleben describes is the stuff of my childhood fantasy fiction novels that easily moved me to believe that trees were sentient and could wake up and talk and lumber along side the children of Man in Narnia. Although more attentive readers to go to great lengths to make differences between the Ents of Middle Earth and the tree dryads that Lewis took from Greek mythology, there are some trees that still speak to me. 

This one on the walk down to the train station feels like it is doing a slow dervish spin (did it start counterclockwise too?). 

Mr Wohlleben takes this to a whole new level, describing a rich shared environment below the surface that I only occasional imagine when I seen the symbiotic relationship (or shyness/competition/abrasion) between the crowns of trees to form a suburban canopy. 

Timidité des cimes à Bois de Liesse

With a great number of trees in our local forests being ash trees, which are being cut down faster in some mysterious arborist agenda than the Emerald Borer Beetle that infects them, I sometimes walk in sadness through woods that used to give me joy. It is overwhelming to see the destruction of man on so many levels on earth, but imagining that the healthy trees are possibly communicating with and feeding older members of the family gives me comfort. 

Being able to see the canopy spaces between trees gives me a sense of relief that the natural world has good ways to accomodate each other and continue to survive and evolve and thrive in beauty and function.

Of note, the only nearby old growth forest I could find nearby in Quebec is the Beckett woods near Sherbrooke, not far from the camping site we have booked for July. I look forward to checking it out!