Once the people in the town of Duncan became informed about plans to cut down these Garry oaks—which they did because of Hilary, Clare, and many others—people who learned and cared about saving the trees swung into action; this was an intergenerational effort. As a consequence, there is more community awareness about trees with the hope of a tree-preservation bylaw becoming adopted. In Canada, Garry oaks grow only in southeastern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, with some isolated trees elsewhere. The Garry oak was named by botanist and explorer David Douglas for Nicholas Garry of the Hudson's Bay Company, who helped him during his travels.
Tree preservation consciousness is needed to save trees, especially when new owners purchase property with the intent to clear and build, with no regard for the old and beautiful trees that are there. Soon after I heard from Clare, for example, I learned from Patricia Damery, a Jungian analyst in Napa Valley, California, that new owners might clear a hilltop area with a ring of huge valley oaks in a large circle and other landmarks to plant vineyards. This land has been used for rituals and is sacred space for her and quite possibly was used as such when indigenous tribes lived there. The challenge is to approach owners in the same spirit as did the tree people in Canada, without rage or blame, and mobilize the concern of the community for its special trees, possibly with the added American incentive that if land and trees such as these are donated to a land trust, there can be tax benefits. Intergenerational activism may be required to protect the trees while agreements to save them can be worked out. Tree sitting and consequent media attention are done by young adult activists who are aware that once trees are cut down, the conversation is over, while mature, established citizen-taxpayer tree people are the ones that have political influence, especially locally, which is where tree issues are settled.
The Nature Speaks Project
Linda Milks became a tree activist after she received what she calls her mission in life as a communication from trees that she took to heart. She is the founder of the Nature Speaks Project. On a beautiful, sunny day in 1999, she was enjoying a drive on winding roads through the trees and hills in Marin County, north of San Francisco, when “I began to notice an organized thought form come into my awareness.” It was an unusual experience for her. When it persisted, she pulled over to the side of the road to focus on the specific, telepathic communication she was receiving. She says, “I simply knew this was coming from Trees. My experience was one of listening to something coming from outside of myself and not a thought coming from within. I had no doubt that Tree consciousness was ‘speaking.’ They wanted a bridge of understanding between trees and humans.” At the time, Linda felt the message was specifically for her, but since then, she has come to believe that it was more like an all-points bulletin, and she was one of the humans who responded. She says that at that moment, she knew that she would answer the call and that her own growth would be tied directly to this work.
This is inner knowledge, or gnosis—the certainty that people feel when they respond from deep recognition or know the significance of the choice they are making, while not knowing where it will lead and that others are likely not to understand. Yet for those with such certainty and courage to trust, the promise is that this is an authentic and meaningful choice, chosen by soul rather than ego. So the Nature Speaks Project began with Linda's idea that she would interview people who could speak with trees to record their stories.
One of the stories in the website collection (Nature Speaks Project) is Linda's own: When she was nine and lived in Lake Jackson, Texas, she took an axe to cut down a small tree. The trunk was probably about six inches in diameter, the tree ten to twelve feet tall. She approached the tree feeling powerful and excited. Then she swung the ax and made a cut into the tree. Something felt wrong; she felt she was hurting someone and shouldn't be doing this. Her reaction didn't feel rational, so she made a second cut, and at that point, she received a telepathic communication, the tone of which was “that of a wise, patient, and compassionate grandfather and it consisted mainly of questions.” Such ones as she remembers had to do with why she wanted to cut down the tree, didn't she realize it was a living being, other trees and animals liked having this tree here, why would she want to hurt the tree and take its life away? She went back to the house to ask her mother about trees and if they could feel, and was told, “No, trees don't feel anything. You can cut it down if you want to.” In Linda's own experience, however, she knew that her mother was wrong and that she had hurt a living, feeling being. This was her only childhood recollection of communications from trees. Forty years passed before she pulled over to the side of the road in Marin, and listened to what the Trees had to say to her.
Often significant memories of non-ordinary reality or active imagination that many people had as children fade, are forgotten, or if the child spoke of them and was made to feel ashamed, the memory becomes associated with pain and is suppressed. It is this very facility—to be psychic, mystic, attuned to energy, or transmissions of feelings or sensations, sometimes images, or intuitive impressions—that can connect adults with Nature and their own authentic nature, at a time when the fate of the planet depends on humans feeling these connections.
Still-Standing Ancient Trees
The coast redwoods in Muir Woods (Sequoia sempervirens) are conifers, one of the three surviving redwood species left on Earth in small pockets in isolated areas. At one time, there were two million acres of virgin coast redwood forests; now a little more than 3 percent of the original forest remains safe from loggers in state parks and one national park. Efforts to save these old growth trees on privately held land has been an ongoing struggle, beginning with John Muir, taken up by Save the Redwoods League, Earth First!, and other organizations and individuals. (“Old growth” forests are where there are no signs of past or present human activity.) The world's tallest tree is a coast redwood. The title is currently held by Stratosphere Giant at 368.6 feet in Humboldt State Park, edging out the longtime titleholder Tall Tree in Redwood National Park, which in 1990 was estimated to be over 1,500 years old and 368 feet (112 meters) tall. Twenty-six redwoods over 360 feet tall have been found, eighty-six over 350 feet. These coast redwoods are the tallest living things on Earth.
Their cousins are the giant redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum) found on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. General Sherman, a giant redwood growing in the Sequoia National Park, is the largest living thing on Earth, with an estimated age of 2,700 years, and an estimated weight of 2.7 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms). Their only other living relative is the dawn redwood, which grows in a remote area of the Hubei province in China.
These trees are ancient tree beings and great works of Nature's art. To a tree person, cutting them down for lumber would be like pulverizing Michelangelo's statues of David or the Pieta to make marble tiles, or bulldozing the acropolis in Athens as a site for a hotel.
Trees are the oldest living things on Earth. Among the bristlecone pines growing on a barren mountainside in eastern California's White Mountains, there is a 4,841-year-old (as of 2010) bristlecone (Pinus longaeva) named Methuselah, after the longest-lived patriarch in the biblical book of Genesis (said to have lived 969 years). Methuselah lives in a grove with others that are over four thousand years old. These trees began their lives before the great pyramids of Egypt were built. They grow on steep, rocky slopes at elevations between 9,000 feet and 11,500 feet (2,700–3,500 meters). Half the year, the temperature is below freezing, with deep snowfalls and ferocious winds. The harsh environment and the bristlecones' response to it have enabled them to reach their great age. That they don't have humans in their vicinity is one saving grace, and they are protected and in a national park, which makes their survival much more likely.
The 2009 documentary The National Parks: America's Best Idea by Ken Burns is a twelve-hour series that tells the story of each park as well as shows them to us. Meant to be reserved for the people for all time, national parks came into being through the fierce love that influential and often very wealthy men had for the beauty and splendor of wilderness places. Ancient forests of giant sequoias and towering redwoods as well as the bristlecone pines are now within America's national parks.
Anna Lewington and Edward Parker open their book Ancient Trees: Trees That Live