On a blustery day in the windy season, I walked out to my study plot in the tropical cloud forest of Monteverde, Costa Rica. For the last 25 years, I have ascended trees with mountain-climbing gear to study forest canopy biology. Three miles up the trail, one of the largest trees in the plot had toppled, an individual I knew intimately from scores of trips up and down its trunk. I had named this tree “The Mansion” because its giant crown suggests a gracious home of many rooms, each branch festooned with orchids, bromeliads, and ferns, and inhabited by a…
The Science Creative Quarterly
By nalininadkami
Dr. Nadkarni is a forest ecologist and Professor of Environmental Studies at The Evergreen State College. She carries out field research in the upper canopy of cloud forests of Costa Rica and temperate rainforests of Washington State. She is also President of the International Canopy Network, a non-profit organization that promotes communication among researchers, educators, and conservationists concerned with forest canopies and forest ecosystems.
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG SAPLING: TREES AS ARTISTS AND MOBILE ENTITIES
Image resulting from tree “painting” by Douglas-fir for two minutes. Trees epitomize immobility and passivity. They are rooted in one place, have extremely long lives relative to humans, and react slowly to most environmental stimuli, so both practically and symbolically, trees are closely linked with the related characteristics of stability, constancy, and permanence. The word “tree” is derived from the Sanskrit word “deru”, which shares its roots with the words endure, hard, and continue. Spiritual practitioners often relate sitting silently in one place – like a tree — to religious leaders such as the Buddha, who achieved enlightenment under the…