The Trees Will Die
An increase of one degree in average temperature moves the climatic zones thirty-five tofifty miles north... The trees will die. Considernothing more than that—just that the treeswill die.
Bill McKibben, The End of Nature
Late in Vermont let me considersome familiar trees I've lived amongfor thirty years of sleet and snow,of sun and rain: the aspensquaking silver when the wet winds blow,
the white oaks, with their seven-lobed leavesand gently furrowed bark,whose April buds sprout reddish-brown;and I'll consider pin oaks,their stiff branches sloping down
asserting their own space, and sculpted leaves,flaming vermilion in the fall,holding on even when they're curled and dry,through freezing winter stormsin which we huddle, you and I,
around afire that woos us back to feelwhat our ancestors feltsome sixty-thousand years ago;and I'll consider red oaks with their pointed leaves,shiny dark trunks that seem to know
the secret of slow growth,a message safe to pass along.And then, considering the plenitudeof maples here, I'll start with sugarfor its syrup and its symmetry, its brood
of tiny yellow flower clustersin the spring, and in the autumn such a blazeof orange, gold, and red,whatever gloom might form the drizzling weatherin my doom-reflecting head,
relief comes from the self-for getfulnessof looking at what's therethe trees, the multitude of trees.I stop here to consider in the brief years leftto praise them and to please
you who have loved their scented shade,their oceanic choiring in the wind. And so I'll lista few more that I know:the silver maple and the willow and the birch,box-elder, bass wood, and the shadblow
whose pinkish-white flowersquicken the awakened woodsand quicken me. And then the spruce and pines,their slender, tapered conesglimmering intricate designs
that tempt astonished eyes to contemplatehow an indifferent forcejustevolutionary randomness,yet so like old divinity—could wrest such pattern from initial emptiness.
Before our histoij began,the void commandedthere be congregated trees and creatures filledwith words to mimic themand represent the moods that spilled
out of the creature's thoughts into the worldso that the trees and names for treeswould then be joined as one:the melancholy hemlocks in the humming dark,the tamaracks which flare gold in the sun
as if to hold the lightof wavering October in their armsa little longer, as I doyet though they're evergreens at heart,like me, my dear, and you,
they lose their needles when the cold comes on.And as the tilted planet turnsto offer us fresh colors that embellish speech,more names rush into view:the sycamore, the cedar, and the beech,
horse chestnut, butternut,the hickories, black walnut, and of coursethe cornucopia of fruitsapple and cherry, pear and plum and peacheach with a tang that suits
the palate of whatever tasteone might have dreamed of ripened paradise.When I consider howa man-made shift in climate of a few degreesreveals the rebel power we now
have learned to cultivatein order to subdue the animalsand take dominion, like a curse,over the fields, the forests, and the atmosphereas if the universe
belonged to us alone—I wonderif consideration of the family of treesmight give us pauseand let us once again obey the sun,whose light commands all human laws.
Robert Pack, from Minding the Sun (University of Chicago Press)
