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The Trees in My Forest QUOTES

The Trees in My Forest QUOTES

1 " The lycopods have triumphed in their own way. They have survived with few alterations more than four hundred million years because they operate with an energy economy involving only minute overhead costs. They have found a different way to avoid violating a fundamental law of survival: “Don’t spend more than you have earned. "

― Bernd Heinrich , The Trees in My Forest

2 " Lycopods gain their meager allotment of energy by being in the right place at the right time. As in any other organism, having enough energy is critical to survival. One strategy is to try to accumulate more, the other is to get by on less. Modern lycopods do both, but they have perfected the latter strategy. "

― Bernd Heinrich , The Trees in My Forest

3 " The very idea of "managing" a forest in the first place is oxymoronic, because a forest is an ecosystem that is by definition self-managing. "

― Bernd Heinrich , The Trees in My Forest

4 " Spraying to kill trees and and raspberry bushes after a clear-cut merely looks unaesthetic for a short time, but tree plantations are deliberate ecodeath. Yet, tree planting is often pictorially advertised on television and in national magazines by focusing on cupped caring hands around a seedling. But forests do not need this godlike interference... Planting tree plantations is permanent deforestation... The extensive planting of just one exotic species removes thousands of native species. "

― Bernd Heinrich , The Trees in My Forest

5 " Planting nuts requires a vision for a future that goes beyond one’s mortal reach. If we envision ourselves as participants in the same grand, complex web of interactions as the forest, then planting acorns is like planting part of ourselves. The morality that comes from such a vision of ecosystem-as-life is a common thread that, if taught and encouraged, could unite all of mankind. "

― Bernd Heinrich , The Trees in My Forest

6 " A tree starts out as we do, as the union of two haploid gametes, the egg and the sperm. Cells divide again and again to become embryos. An infinitesimally small number of embryos become seedlings, and out of these, a tiny subset become trees. Time may stand still for decades in some seeds that enter dormancy until conditions for growth become suitable. Time may stop for decades as the seedling exists in the shade, garnering just enough energy for survival but not enough for growth. Time speeds up as sunlight is reached and the tree explodes in sudden growth and then proceeds along its trajectory to reproduction, senescence, and death. In some trees, like the gray birch and balsam fir, maximum life span is usually shorter than our own. In many others it is close to ours, while in a few trees, including the bristlecone pines, a life span of four thousand years is not impossible.

Bristlecone pines grow extremely slowly because they live in a cold climate (the White Mountains of California) and because they have little water and few nutrients. They nevertheless stay a step or two ahead of decay and death because the climate also dries their deadwood. It takes them thousands of years to experience the growth, and life, that a white pine in Maine experiences in two hundred summers. Trees must be growing to be alive, but different species grow, and therefore live, at very different rates. Thus, even to a tree, both time and life are relative. "

― Bernd Heinrich , The Trees in My Forest

7 " Like other species, we evolved in wilderness and although we are now able to satisfy many of our physical needs outside it (at least in the short term), psychologically we still need the vital diversity, complexity, grandeur, and beauty of wild places. We need to feel connected to something tangible that can be seen, smelled, tasted, that is much greater than out own fleeting existence. Call it religion. There are untold millions who believe in this religion although they may not come out and say so, mostly because its tenets are so deeply ingrained as to be taken for granted. No organized faith is therefore necessary. To me and others of this religion a wilderness made by God and/or by the mechanism of evolution is at least as, if not more, holy than a cathedral made by man, and to harm it is a desecration. I see enough glimpses of this wilderness in my forest to feel inspired by a feeling of interconnectedness with the web of life. It gives me a dream. It is a realistic dream that is not destructive, and that all can take part in and enjoy the results. Preserving and fostering the fantastic life on earth grants infinitely more practical and intellectual rewards than the expensive but trivial knowledge of whether there are microbes on Mars. "

― Bernd Heinrich , The Trees in My Forest

8 " Solid unbroken forest is all around me, stretching far beyond my vision, for hundreds of miles. It is one of the few such forests remaining in the world. The forest regulates the water flow from the frequent heavy rains. It prevents floods, providing steady runoff in to the trout-filled streams. It used to support salmon runs. Such a forest is also the diffuse lung tissue of the earth to which we are irrevocably bound. It is not our “environment.” It is us. "

― Bernd Heinrich , The Trees in My Forest