The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(17)

“It’s interesting,” she said, “that both Peter and Suzanne started off as foresters—managing forests so that they could be harvested in the most profitable way. Peter quit his job after fifteen years when he found that a forest he loved was doing quite well on its own, with almost no managing. And so he decided to devote himself to protecting—and understanding—that forest. He wrote a book: The Hidden Life of Trees. And I honestly think that this book has done for trees what In the Shadow of Man did for chimpanzees.”

“Yes, and Suzanne has now written a book called Finding the Mother Tree that is having a similar impact,” I said.

Jane was looking outside at the branches of a tree just beyond the window, faintly illuminated by the lights in our cabin. I wondered aloud what she was thinking.

“I am feeling wonder and awe about this incredible world we live in. And the truth is, we’re destroying it before we’ve even finished learning about it. We think we are smarter than nature, but we are not. Our human intellect is amazing, but we must be humble and recognize that there is an even greater intelligence in nature.”

“Do you have hope that we can find our way back to the wisdom of nature?” I asked.

“Yes, I do, but again, without head and heart working together, without cleverness and compassion, the future is very grim. But hope is essential, for without it, we become apathetic, and we will continue to destroy our children’s future.”

“Can we really heal all that we have harmed?”

“We must!” Jane exclaimed vehemently. “We’ve already made a start, and nature is there, waiting to move in and help to heal herself. Nature is so extraordinarily resilient. And remember, nature is so much more intelligent than we are!”

It was the perfect segue into Jane’s second reason for hope.





REASON 2: THE RESILIENCE OF NATURE


“Let’s take a walk,” Jane said the next morning. We pulled on our jackets and went outside, the air chilly as the north wind greeted us, blowing through the trees of the preserve. “We can make something hot when we get back,” Jane encouraged as we pulled the door closed. “It’s good to have at least one walk a day,” said Jane, after a few steps. “Though I don’t really like to go for a walk without a dog.”

“Why is that?”

“A dog gives a walk a purpose.”

“How?”

“Well, you are making someone else happy.” I thought of the rescue dogs at Jane’s house in Tanzania, and how she never seemed happier than when she was surrounded by all creatures great and small.

It was a beautiful walk around a small lake, and Jane served as field guide, pointing out the sights she had seen the day before. The trees were mostly leafless, the land in winter slumber.

After we had walked for about thirty minutes, the sun broke through the clouds, illuminating a large tree in the distance.

“Let’s go as far as that tree in the sun,” Jane said, “and then turn back.”

I was happy to move toward any spot of warmth. The tree was tilted to the side after many years of being buffeted by the strong winds.

When we arrived, Jane rested her hand on the moss-covered trunk of a magnificent Turner’s oak.

“Here’s the tree I wanted to come and say hello to.… ‘Hello, tree.’” The tree sheltered us from the wind as the sun fell across our faces.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, touching the spongy green moss that Jane was stroking affectionately. Jane had told me that as a child she had a deep bond with a beech tree in her garden. She used to climb up and read her Doctor Doolittle and Tarzan books, disappearing for hours into the tree’s leafy embrace and feeling closer to the birds and the sky.

“Did you have a name for that tree?”

“Just Beech,” Jane said. “I loved him so much that I convinced my grandmother—we called her Danny—to give him to me for my fourteenth birthday and even drew up a last will and testament for her to sign, gifting me Beech. I used a basket and a long piece of string to haul up my books and sometimes even did my homework up there. And I dreamed of going to live with animals in wild places.”

“I know you’ve mostly studied animals, but you also learned a lot about plants when you were researching your last book, Seeds of Hope.”

“Yes, and I absolutely loved that experience—what a fascinating world, the plant kingdom. And when you think about it, without flora there would be no fauna, would there! There would be no humans. All animal life ultimately depends on plants if you think about it. It’s a kind of amazing tapestry of life, where each little stitch is held in place by those around it. And we still have so much to learn—we’re like babes in the wood when it comes to really understanding nature. We haven’t even begun to learn about the myriad of forms of life in the soil beneath us. Just think—the roots of this tree are way down there, knowing so much that we don’t—and taking the secrets up to the branches above us.”

As Jane looked from the ground up toward the very top of the tree, I had a vivid picture of her up in Beech, being rocked by the wind. I also thought of how her hands had rippled in flight in Tanzania as she was describing the murmuration of starlings and how she had said a naturalist needed to have empathy, intuition, even love. I wanted to know what she had found in the deepest mysteries of the natural world, and why what she discovered there gave her a sense of peace and hope for the future that I desperately wanted to find.