Copyright © 2011 by Jean Shinoda Bolen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.
ISBN: 978-1-57324-488-6
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Bolen, Jean Shinoda.
Like a tree : how trees, women, and tree people can save the planet / by Jean Shinoda Bolen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57324-488-6 (alk. paper)
1. Forest conservation. 2. Women—Psychology. 3. Women political activists. 4. Mythology. I. Title.
SD411.B58 2011
305.42—dc22
2010048430
Cover design by Jim Warner
Cover photograph © Pauline H. Tesler, “Author in Monterey Cypress Tree (Cupressus macrocarpa)”
Interior design by Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Typeset in Minion Pro and Trajan Pro
TS
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
Printed in the United States of America on recycled paper.
“One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”
—ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPERY, Little Prince
“The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.”
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Nature
CONTENTS
7. Wise Like a Tree: Tree People
Discussion/Reflection Questions
INTRODUCTION
The seed idea for this book began with the observation that there are “tree people,” and that I am one of them. A tree person has positive feelings for individual trees and an appreciation of trees as a species. A tree person may have been a child who kept treasures in a tree, or had a sanctuary in one, or climbed up to see the wider world, a child for whom trees were places of imaginative play and retreat. A tree person is someone who may have learned about trees in summer camp or through earning a scout badge or was a child who could lose track of time in nearby woods or the backyard. A tree person met up with Nature in childhood or as an adult, and like the four-footed ones who retreat to lick their wounds, may still heal emotional hurts by going to where the trees are. A tree person understands why a young woman might spend over two years in an old growth, ancient redwood, in order to protect it from being cut down. A tree person can become a tree activist at any age.
A huge Monterey pine stood in front of the house that is now my home. I noticed it before I walked down the walk and across the entry deck to enter the house. It never occurred to me that by a vote of a homeowners association this beautiful tree that was here before any houses went up and was in its prime could be cut down because a neighbor wanted it down and could mobilize the necessary votes. In trying to save my tree, I was in many conversations and meetings, and found that there is a world of difference between tree people and “not-tree people.”
I also found that there is a world of information to learn about trees, beginning with why this particular kind of tree thrives on a hillside ridge that often has a morning blanket of fog. Pine needles act as fog condensers that drip moisture down to the ground and, in effect, they water themselves. Tree people like me see the beauty of trees and may have photographed or painted them, but we may have a limited botanical knowledge of them. As I thought about writing this book, I remembered reading the classic novel Moby-Dick, and recalled how information about whales was interspersed throughout the narrative. I wanted to do something similar in this book, and in the process of learning about what a tree is and that they are the oldest living beings on Earth, I acquired a sense of wonder about them.
Rain forests have been called the lungs of the planet. Forests take in prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide, bind the carbon into themselves, and create oxygen, which is then released into the atmosphere we breathe. Each individual tree does this, just as each individual human, just by breathing, produces carbon dioxide, which trees use. We have a reciprocal relationship with trees. Meanwhile, the tropical rain forests and arboreal forests in North America, northern Europe, and Asia are disappearing at an accelerating rate, while the number of humans grows geometrically. Global warming is related to the increase in carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases in the atmosphere, which humans produce indirectly through what we use. The more humans there are and the fewer trees there are, the more carbon there will be in the atmosphere and the warmer it will get.
Like a Tree is a title that draws upon the use of the word “like” as simile. There are chapter headings such as “Standing Like a Tree” or “Sacred Like a Tree” that describe similarities between trees, people, and symbols. “Like” is also a verb meaning having some affection for: as in “Do you like this tree?” Tree people can have a range of feelings for individual trees as well as particular species. We relate to trees in ways that not-tree people never do. The polarities of contrast between a tree person and a not-tree person: Joyce Kilmer's “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree” and the statement attributed to Ronald Reagan, “You see one tree, you've seen them all.”
On the day that my Monterey pine was cut down, I was not there to see it happen. I had done all I could do, short of organizing a demonstration to save it. The tree cutters would do the deed when I was away, and with a heavy heart I anticipated the loss on my return. I was in New York City at the United Nations. For years now, I have been going to the United Nations when the Commission on the Status of Women meets in March. Parallel