KSL 376: On the Nature of Trees

by Tina Erwin

 It seems that everywhere you look, someone is cutting down a tree, some developer is ‘clearing a property to suit’ some potential business buyer. Imagine how much more beautiful a property would be nestled among trees. You really see this tree slaughter in the Southern United States where lot after lot is utterly leveled.

You also see trees leveled by various homeowner associations that live in terror of being sued by the fall of any tree. In some associations it is a wonder that any trees survive at all.

Some people are fearful of trees, thinking that they may fall on a house or car. This does happen at odd times in the West where the dreaded Eucalyptus trees, shallow rooted devils that they are, have been known to fall. Yet, many hundreds of thousands of them line the freeways in California providing some modest grace to an open, often, barren landscape. These same trees also provide nesting places for raptor birds as well as other very large birds like owls, egrets, herons and ibis.

Pine trees can snap in violent windstorms that happen in almost any part of the country. People hate them for the pine needles that fall on their cars. Yet, pines provide so much shade, so many negative ions that clean the air and so much grace that the world would be a much sadder place without them. They are also nesting places for lots of very large birds.

Many people dislike the ‘mess’ that trees create through the normal process of just living. They shed branches, leaves, seeds, needles, flower petals, and pollen. Imagine that! The normal process of living creates messy debris for we humans. We cannot seem to tolerate a mess in plants, but we expect nature to accommodate us as we pollute the planet.

We are so busy being important that we often forget the importance of those things in our lives that make our lives interesting and dynamic.

One of the things that we may also be unaware of is the very subtle yet critical interrelationship between the sky, the air, trees, the land and all the animals. They speak to each other in their own language. Birdsong helps trees to grow, triggering some mysterious reaction in the trees. Trees owe their existence in part to the spreading of their seeds by birds. Birds and trees need the air, the wind to literally lift up the birds on air currents and allow the birds and often seed pods to literally fly across the lands to grow in a variety of places. When trees are cut down, birds have no place to grow, insects cannot populate and grow and all the lesser plants that must have large trees under which to grow, also die out. Decimating trees started the desertification of many areas of the world.

Finally, consider the arrogance of being able to cut down, in a mere seconds, what has often taken nature sometimes a few years to a thousand years to grow as in the case of a redwood or Sequoia.

Tree huggers seem to get a bad rap, yet, they have served to remind us that trees have a personality presence in our lives, a kind ‘statelyness’ that softens any landscape and makes us respect the power and persistence of nature.

What can one person do? What are many people doing? They are planting trees, lots of them. Where you can, plant a grove of trees, create sanctuaries where trees can be protected. Go to planning committees in cities and make it illegal for developers to level any piece of property because of runoff, loss of habitat and the desertification of all of our lands.

Help other people to respect the power and the majesty of trees. Perhaps pondering the long term commitment to a relationship we have with nature will empower all of us to be more circumspect when we have to cut down a tree. Perhaps, possibly in the future, there will be a better way to do things.

FireFly Watch

Here is the link to a great site that is actually tracking Fireflies because they seem to be disappearing all over the world. How ironic that the Virginian Pilot had an article about this on June 21, the day that the Karmic Savings and Loan Chapter on Lightening Bugs came out.

https://www.mos.org/fireflywatch/understanding_fireflies

KS&L 290 Lightening Bugs

When you live in the West, you enjoy the pleasure of low humidity, dynamic vistas, and glorious days of endless sunshine. However, when you live in the East, especially the Southern United States, there are some unique pleasures there as well once you get past the mosquitoes, the humidity and the poison ivy. The Southern United States offer the jewels of gorgeous Technicolor countryside, the ozone producing summer drama of thunder, lightening and rain, and the charming canopy affect of trees that grace every highway and neighborhood. But best of all, the South has Lightening Bugs.

Actually, without the rain, the heavy foliage and the powerful humidity, Lightening Bugs couldn’t exist. For those out West or in other countries, perhaps it would be good to describe just exactly what a Lightening Bug is. Well, what it is, is magic.

Lightening Bugs or Fire Flies as they are also known are little insects that come in at least two varieties in the Deep South, but globally there are over 2,000 species. One is a lovely light rusty brown and lives on leaves and climbs on plants during the day. When you can find one in daylight hours, they are still magic, because they crawl on your fingers and will actually do this for quite a while before they think about it, extend their charming little wings and fly off a short distance to a nearby tree. The other kind is rather black with a red head. The larvae of Lightening Bugs are known as glowworms.

Fire Flies can emit yellow, green, or pale red light. Their light is a cold light in that no ultraviolet or infrared rays are produced and 90% of the energy that they produce goes into the light, without creating heat. Contrast the efficiency of that bioluminescence to a man-made light bulb, which only converts 10% of energy into light and gives off heat.

Sometimes, even though we can scientifically identify what is happening with a creature, sometimes we forget to consider how the existence of that creature affects us: that their interaction with us, creates a karmic situation. When we become adults, sometimes we are so busy being adult, that we forget to remember what created magical moments in our lives. We also forget to enjoy the magical things around us that are often subtle, gentle gifts of nature.

The word ‘magic’ comes from the ancient word ‘magi’ which meant wise one, or in less romantic terminology, white magician. Often these priests or magi, were the ones who were revered precisely because they understood how to speak to nature, how to read natural signs and how to live in harmony with nature. We call it magic, they called it obeying natural law and they knew that obeying that law carried with it a great deal of karma, but enough history, back to Fire Flies.

Lightening Bugs start their mating ritual on sultry, Southern summer nights. They hang in the warm moist air at about four to seven feet off the ground. They are thinking carnal thoughts, so they forget to notice that they are easy to catch. Many a child has put a bunch of them in a jar with holes in the lid and hoped he or she could take the jar to bed to read by the light of fireflies. Little kids blinded by charm and innocence, forget to notice that you cannot organize lightening bugs to glow at the same time. By morning, they are released and allowed to restore their energy for mating.

Sadly, fireflies light charming Southern nights less and less as habitat and pesticides destroy their way of life. However, near wooded areas where there are lots of trees and yes, often poison ivy, we can find them. These creatures invite us to slow down and enjoy those magical natural times where we can watch them living and being at one with nature. In those precious moments of discovery we can be little kids again ourselves and delight in those wonderful memories of childhood.