The Philosophy of Trees

This next writing is from Friday, February 1st, and was the writing group assignment for this month. The topic was simply ‘trees’. Each of us wrote very different pieces about trees. From fantasy to real life, we were, as always creatively different. From laughter to poignancy we read and listened to each other with interest. Always interested in the philosophical episodes of Star Trek and watching the violent destruction of trees in the movie Lord of the Rings, I mused about the Philosophy of Trees in my short essay below.

The Philosophy of Trees

One may think that trees are not sentient beings that can even formulate something as grand as a philosophy. And maybe they are not. After all, they have no language of their own that humanity can hear. Like a musical instrument they do translate the music of the environment. Birds of all sizes nest leafy or needled branches. Squirrels scramble up gnarled or smooth trunks, race in and out of branches, raising their young in cosy hollows. Bugs and insects range all along the surfaces of trunks and branches, homes found especially in fallen tree trunks. From the still living roots, new shoots spring up beginning the life of a new tree. In a deep forest where humanity’s noise cannot be heard, the orchestra of forest life plays without stop, only the players varying as they go about their life. The trees of our forests have given us our homes whether we are grateful or not to them for their lives. They have provided fuel for the earliest fires in our existence. When the trees of the forest, or of our city streets breath in and out, they breathe out oxygen and absorb the carbon dioxide that the rest of the world exhales. Make no mistake, trees are not benign martyrs that only give. They will strike back, or die, when they are taken for granted. Roots will wrap themselves around underground wires and sewers. Trees will grow up through cement blocks and pull eaves-troughs from homes. Trees will survive from their seed and from their roots. When I reflect on all of these things, I believe that the philosophy of trees, where trees are sentient or not, is service and survival. Service to all of life from the tiniest insect to the grandest mansion, to inventors and makers of paper and the shade we love on a hot summers day. Survival to continue the cycle of life that we all enjoy. The greatest service just may be that trees make us smile, the loss of their beauty and grace felt when they reach the end of their life span.

“To be without trees would, in the most literal way, to be without our roots.”

~ Richard Mabey, Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees