Learn, Plant, Grow
The amazing company I work for has a value: Learn, Teach, Grow. It seems straightforward; Learn what you can, teach what you learn, grow as a person and collectively as a whole. Embarking on this reforestation project has me considering these actions in the context of forests and Life. There is really nothing linear or simple about the learning, doing, and growing process in nature. However, when I started, I did what most human brains want to do when tackling a complex project; Over simplify and create a linear path to a point of completion.
I figured out the basics (or so I thought): What native trees to order, how deep to dig the hole, how far to space the trees, a system for watering and protecting; it didn’t take long to realize that planting these 140 trees needed to be a “learning”. I am down to about 50% survival. While I did learn some things before I planted, I realize now that I only scratched the surface.
These three books literally blew my mind and helped me expand my awareness of what it actually takes to grow a forest:
Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree provided a ton of mind blowing discoveries that also lends practical knowledge about how to tend and grow a forest. Power’s pulitzer prize winning novel, The Overstory, juxtaposed the spiritual and mysterious awareness of nature with the humbling limitations and entrapments of the human mind. Then, Sheldrake, in Entangled Life, tells the tale of the under appreciated power of fungi as a literal, yet invisible web of life connecting everything. All of these books reminded me that forests are complex ecosystems deserving reverence.
Turns out growing a forest is much more than digging holes in a grass filled field and plunking trees in them. Nature is whole, involving interactions between a seemingly infinite number of players. It is awe-inspiring. It is spiritual. But, in our need to understand, we, as humans, break the whole into small pieces that cannot be put back together. We view non-human living things as commodities losing the wonder and awe that accompanies the oneness of nature. We forget that our health and existence depends on the health of our environment. This disconnection makes it possible for us to slowly destroy the earth and ourselves without even realizing it. And this is where we find ourselves today. I am hopeful to restore my reverence for nature along with the forest that once grew on the land I find myself inhabiting, before it’s too late.
There is a “forest building” company called Afforestt that reveres the oneness of nature in building forests. The founder, SHUBHENDU SHARMA, a former Toyota industrial engineer started this company after being inspired by AKIRA MIYAWAKI who spoke to his company about growing a forest on the property. There are six parts:
Survey local forests
Procure seedlings (collect seeds from native trees)
Prepare the soil 1 meter deep
Enhance soil microbiology
Plant
Mulch
I am on step one of this process and doing my best to keep the “learning trees” alive. I am making connections and developing a plan for the entire 16 acres including our barn…which is a story for the next time I write.