through quiet spruce
the shadows dance and lead me
never lost
I just finished the novel North Woods by Daniel Mason*. I loved it. It was sweeping, intricate, and covered so many themes, from apple orchards and ecological succession, to art and the afterlife. It was at times confusing, and wandered here and there, and then at times was crystal clear, and focused. I was especially fond of the ways the author weaved in the patterns of tree disease and the ways the woods of the north-east have been shaped by blights, beetles, and various kinds of fungi.
I feel that one of the underlying themes (at least for me!) was about the mismatch between a human’s life in a forest compared to the life and death of trees, and how once stood Chestnuts and Elms, and soon we will say farewell to Ash trees, and our Hemlocks are under siege. Yet we forget so quickly and assume sometimes the forests of today have some resemblance to the forests of yesterday. I mean, they do in some ways – there are trees, canopy, undergrowth.
We are the here and now, yet a tree’s here and now is decades longer than ours. Slow change is still change and only those who watch carefully might notice the details. If you stand in one place for long enough, these differences become apparent. Mason’s book uses an 18th century house in Massachusetts as this foundational character that watched the world change.
The watercolour above is bookmark size, and one that I did several years ago. It’s an attempt to capture a forest scene, but not one I know directly, but rather one from perhaps a memory or just made up completely. I love that “The Woods” is something people know even if they are highly variable and made of such different species. Forests are forests – we know what they are even it’s a thicket with spruce or other evergreens, or a young patch of trembling aspen. Everyone knows a single tree in a field isn’t a forest, but once you bring together enough trees – just enough – you suddenly call it a forest. Maybe when it’s big enough so if you stand in the middle of the woods, you can no longer see the edge? Maybe it’s when the tree canopy is big enough and full enough so that the interior of the woods is truly shaded?
Forests are magical places, and we should not forget that.
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*here’s a review of the book, if you are interested: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/16/north-woods-by-daniel-mason-review-an-epic-of-american-lives
© Christopher M Buddle 2024
Nature's Reverie 