To the Tree, a Fellow Subject of Sympathy

Maya Walker

Maya Walker is a recent graduate of the University of Delaware with an Honors degree in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation and a minor in English. Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, she developed a kinship with the natural world on her trips to the outskirts of the city growing up. In addition to the environment, she is particularly interested in the intersections of ecological conservation and race. In her free time, Maya enjoys birding, baking, and on occasion, speaking for the trees.

Abstract

To the Tree, a Fellow Subject of Sympathy is my take on two topics that intersect more than academia cares to admit: race and nature. In my years studying Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, I have sought out intersectional environmentalism wherever I have been able to find it. I chose to format this as a letter rather than a critical essay because of the sensitivity of the topic. As alluded to, I do not believe that some issues, especially those deeply emotional and personal, can be written with only logos. Accordingly, data and citations cannot account for the pain behind them. A letter read by anyone other than its writer or addressee becomes a fishbowl, a glimpse into an intimate conversation, which can, at times, be easier to digest than exposition. Thus, I wrote this as an opportunity to look in on rather than as an explanation. Positioning myself, the narrator, as a pen pal to the California Redwood allowed me to juxtapose the Black Lives Matter movement and the environmental movement of the 1970s, which were similar in that, despite the progress that came from them, the same tragedies that led to national outrage continue to occur. The American environmental movement was largely whitewashed, and the impact of this remains in the white landscape of the American outdoors. Even if just in writing, I find it important to continually afford Black people an opportunity to engage with it. The Black Lives Matter movement, likewise, was a fad for many white Americans, and those left behind are still fighting for the systematic reform that so many briefly advocated. The word “white” never appeared in this paper out of intention. Any oppressed person (or plant) knows the oppressor, so the word is implicit. 2020 was the first time I, and many of my black friends and family, felt truly seen by white people. Being given a voice for the first time and being asked to take up space with it gave me a newfound understanding of privilege. Although I did not give the redwood the opportunity to respond to my letter in this text, I feel as though by writing about trees, it gives them a voice. In making the comparison between the climax of the two movements, I am not attempting to assert that George Floyd’s death was tantamount to cutting down a tree. Finding similarities between disciplines is arguably one of the best ways to change perspectives, even when one has a difficult time understanding another. Some Black readers might read this and introspect on their relationship to the natural world. Some botanists or dendrologists might read this and see their subjects of study from less of a purely scientific perspective. Bridging the gaps between the disciplines in humanities and biology becomes increasingly important as the physical space between us shrinks, and illustrating the similarities between living organisms is a pathway to a more thorough understanding of the world we live in — especially as it continues to change.

To the Tree, a Fellow Subject of Sympathy

First, there was the final breath heard around the world, a roar of wind that reverberated through the press. Of course, it was not the first final breath. Many had come before it, only these had not been recorded (unless they had), had not been televised (unless they had), had not been protested (unless they had). But something about this ultimate death struck a chord. Perhaps it was the fires that followed, perhaps it was some primordial sense of kin, perhaps it was a mere circumstance of the political powder keg that had enveloped the world. Nevertheless, it was the first many had heard of the atrocities — or at least the first time they had been able to hear. And suddenly, with this death, there came a newfound promise: a promise to stand. And with this promise from those in power came a cautious hope for survival. And with that, a lull in deaths. But as the powerful do, they forgot. And as lulls do, this one subsided. Then, the next final breath came, only this one was quieter. And with enough time, each successive last breath was softer and softer, until finally, they were reduced to little more than a whisper. The only ones left who can hear them still are members of the breather’s community, who have been born with the misfortune of standing in the path of the reaper’s next swing.

The last redwood to fall before the ban on logging wooden giants was far from the first, but it was a tipping point. The wind’s whistle as centuries fell, the screams of the rodents it flattened, and the crushing weight of its shatter were enough to catch their attention. Now that they had witnessed its final moments and saw that it too breathed life in and out just as deeply, they could comprehend its value. They understood the tragedy of a life taken too soon.

Its life, the subject of national pity, mattered. But not because it was their equal. It mattered because of some sense of indignant responsibility. It was no more than an effigy, any familial ties to it a distant memory.

They could only ever sympathize. After all, how can a man empathize with a tree? How can he relate his lived experience to what is, to many, a thing? He has never had his arms broken for playthings, his hair torn for kindling, his existence trivialized into a single elementary school lesson — and he never will.

You were planted in its stead. Never mind that it will never see you grow to its towering height. Never mind that it housed its own ecosystems, synergizing with organisms smaller than we could ever imagine. Never mind that it still had roots to deepen, rainfalls to soak up, beetles to house, rings to form. Never mind that friends called upon it, using a name unreachable to us within the depths of their mycorrhizal network. Never mind that this individual will never grow again. Never mind that when a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, a community mourns.

What martyrdom, though! What sacrifice, to fall for a movement and at last bring justice to millions unsung. Still lionized, the legacy of that tree bears witness as its relatives are cut down regardless. They matter, but not quite as much — they are not as old, not as virtuous, not as worthy of preserving by some arbitrary decree of morality. We’ll replant, they say, reform that policy, try again in a few years. 

I pass acres of clearcut oaks on my drive home, and I think of the signs held up for their ancestors, and yet I see no outrage on the evening news. I see no chains, or picket signs, or news outlets. I am left to wonder, have they abandoned you all too?

You see, redwood, despite the many miles to the trunk of our evolutionary branches, we are not too unalike.

I know you. I know the name we have given you: Sequoia sempervirens. I know the cypress you call family (one of your cousins, T. distichum, is a neighbor of mine). I know the number of scales on the cones in which you spread your seed. I know how your needles breathe in the summer fog. I know why your green turns to brown. I know you because I have studied your physiology.

I know, too, that to say this is to say that my nature might be gleaned by feeling the grooves of my skull, by glancing at a bell curve, by reading enough books on the African-American experience. 

So, I suppose I am more like them than I care to admit. The words you toss to me in the wind evaporate before my ears can catch them. Come winter, the shivering of my hands and feet cannot translate to the redistribution of your chlorophyll. My blood is not your sap. The coils of my hair are not your stalking tendrils. Although neither of us has crossed by choice, we walk on opposite sides of the street.

But I also know you because on your bark, I can feel the scars left by vacant vows. I can stroke out of your coarse veins the fearful looks leered at you, the people who have fled from you on the off-chance you might fall. I can feel where you, too have been failed.

I know, all too well, how they will glance at your pounds of muscle and decide in an instant whether you are a threat or a commodity. Know this: they may think us beautiful, but they do not respect us. We are something to be taken before we spoil, decided on by color — a walnut flooring, a mahogany chair, a chestnut footrest. They carve their love into us, fetishizing their hatred with vindictive strategy. They tell us how delicious we taste after they bleed us dry.

We are for use, for the taking. Simultaneously, we are a threat, no matter how gently we sway.

Do you find it funny too, redwood, how divisive our existence is? Have you grown as weary of their false promises as I have? Do you long to be heard again as I do? To regain the spotlight and microphone? To stand at the forefront of it all and resent their reality? Do you wish to take up space, to let your branches grow unfettered and extend back into your native range? To remind them to stop killing us? 

I may not understand, but I stand was their mantra to me. It has been 2 years since then, and even longer for you. They have sat back down, sitting idly as we die. As we — and our planet — reach a breaking point. As tears falling from the aspen’s unseeing eyes go unnoticed, another Black mother cries for a child the world has forgotten. Our communities speak in a language that for now only we can understand, and they have once again given up on trying.

They will continue to trot around our corpses for now, but when the city burns again, perhaps the smell of ashes or petrichor will rise and remind them of a promise they once made. And maybe they will hear us again, and this time continue to listen. They will not turn away, bored with our cries, to feign shock at another precedented instance of state-sanctioned violence. One day, they may even look at us one ring deeper. They will see me the same way they see each other, and they’ll see you that way too. They’ll see the way we breathe life into one another. They’ll see the owls nesting in your upper branches, the black bears who scratch their backs against you, the isopods who eat from the soil you aerate, and all else that you do for all other beings. And maybe you and I, redwood, will understand each other one ring deeper, too.

With forever-deepening empathy,

Black Tree Hugger