Planting Trees: a thing that sets us apart.

Many attempts have been made to uniquely distinguish humans from the other animals. Use of tools was a promising one until we observed birds and monkeys using stones and sticks as basic tools for getting into shells and ants' nests. Speech also showed promise until monkeys learnt significant vocabularies in sign language. Farming - but no, ants farm fungus in their nests. Even burying our dead is no longer seen as a uniquely human trait. So, what action makes humans significantly different?

I suggest the fundamental difference is a human tendency to plant trees. Yes, planting trees - but not just as a crop or for the fruit and wood they might produce. All animals need to do things to provide food and shelter. Humans can and do grow things to harvest for food and shelter. But planting a tree is much more.

Squirrels harvest nuts and hide them and ants collect seeds and store them in larders. If these nuts and seeds are forgotten or otherwise left alone long enough in the dark and damp they may germinate but this isn't really planting a tree. Birds and insects are vitally important in the whole fertilisation business, but that isn't planting a tree.

When a human plants a tree, it cannot help but be a symbolic gesture. You must be aware of the scale of time and that you are making a gesture towards a promised future. It is a gesture of hope. You must be aware that the planting is to benefit those who come after you: your family; your children or grandchildren; your neighbours; the other animals of your environment. Humans have the ability to foresee and plan for their future even beyond their own death. We have a need for acts of faith, acts of renewal, ritual confirmations of continuity that is met uniquely in tree planting.

Even planting fruit trees is so much more of a symbolic act than farming annual crops like wheat or rice. You may fully intend to consume the produce from that tree, but not until some point in the future. A future at least years away, that you have imagined, that you have hoped for and believe you can bring about. A future of peace and justice enough for you and your children to enjoy the fruits of your labour. A future that may include quiet contemplation while sitting under the shade and in the comfort of the developing crown. A future in harmony with nature and bees doing their 'thing'. A future that may even include tree houses or at least the excitement and drama of tree climbing. A future that you are actively bringing into existence.

How right and proper it is that trees are planted in our civic places to symbolise remembrance, or nationhood, or bonds between cities and nations, or peace. Trees are an analog for peace and for most humans the planting of a tree is one of the most hopeful things anyone can do.

But every planting of a tree symbolises these things. It is the planting of such symbols that sets us apart.

If you have not planted a tree and looked into the future then you don't know what it is to be truly human.

Impossible things that trees do

My city - Canberra - has been celebrating Tree Week in the lead up to National Tree Day on Sunday 27th July, 2014. I am not sure who decides on these national celebration dates, but I am happy that trees have their own day.

As part of Tree Week, I was invited to make a presentation during celebrations at the National Arboretum of Canberra, and thought I would let the trees themselves show off - demonstrating things they do using only the energy from the sunlight that falls on them that humans can only wonder at. I certainly had fun with that presentation, but I may have gone just a little far with my descriptions of the marvels of trees if the newspaper reports are anything to go by - awed gasps and impassioned sermons?! 

One of the examples I provided was about the (theoretical) ability of trees to grow almost as tall as the Black Mountain Tower (an icon in Canberra) while using only sunlight and simultaneously sequestering over 15000 t of CO2. Humans on the other hand needed over 350 t of reinforcing steel, 1930 t of concrete and emitted over 1700 t of CO2 to build their tower (admittedly in a much shorter time than my hypothetical tree!). While these boring numbers might not have generated awed gasps, the accompanying video footage certainly did -  you can feel both the height that the biggest currently standing trees can get to and see the Tower and its role in the city.

So, particularly on National Tree Day, don't just walk past a tree as if it is just a common ordinary sort of thing - it produces material that is stronger than steel, can pump water from 400 feet below the ground or to 400 feet above the ground, maintain hundreds or thousands of other living species in their crowns and roots, and make humans feel safer and healthier just by looking at them. They can do all these things with air, water and sunlight. Yeah trees! 

An unnatural death

The death of any child is a catastrophe. But a death caused by a tree is somehow an unbelievable or even an unnatural seeming catastrophe. The parents and family of the young Sydney girl crushed by a tree branch last week must feel devastated by this unreal tragedy and my heart goes out to them.

Trees are associated with life; with the future; with security. When we plant a tree we are surely thinking about our children and their children who will be the ones to see it in its maturity and future majesty. There is even a theory that modern-day humans still associate trees, especially those with spreading crowns, with the safety and security they offered our remote ancestors in the African savannahs. Even people raised in cities in the absence of trees, associate images of trees with home, safety and beauty. So what happens when the nature of things goes astray and a tree kills a young girl who was simply sitting in its shade, enjoying her lunch with her teacher?

The first response is to cut the remains of that tree down (which has already been done) and then inspect the trees of city to remove all that might be unsafe. My neighbour, a retired School principal agreed that that's what they proposed in Canberra too. "Its not that uncommon for trees fall on school kids" he said, "remember, about 10 years ago, a little girl was swinging on a low branch in a school playground and it broke and crushed her?" Canberra has about 2 trees planted for every person here, so checking  all 600,000 trees would be a big task. They couldn't check them all  in Canberra then and they won't be able to do it in Sydney now. Besides, what would you check for? Aparently there was no external evidence that those tree branches were going to fail. And if you cut into a tree to check whether there is any internal evidence of a problem, you'll simply be introducing a place for the tree to fail. You cannot remove all the risk of a tree causing a problem, and we certainly live with riskier objects. For example, there are at least 5 times as many planted trees in Canberra as there are cars, but while a tree has killed one person in the last 10 years, cars kill at least a couple every year. So cars are at least 100 times riskier than trees, but we don't stop driving.

But I can understand parents who are scared of trees now and want to keep their kids away. In the same way, people who survive an earthquake might feel unsafe in any sort of building - especially if friends or family died. Can you compare a falling tree with an earthquake? I think you can as both feel unnatural, both cause some place that used to feel safe to now feel threatening, and you cannot ever totally remove the risk of it happening again. One day, the earthquake victim will have to enter the building, and one day children will be near trees.

So if Mencken is right and the first response is wrong, what do we do? Do we stop sitting in the shade of trees? No, because that is something that humans need to do for the good of their spirit. Do we stop kids climbing and playing around trees? No, because that is something humans need to do for the good of their health. Do we teach our children and our parents that trees too are complex living things that are born, and live, and offer wonderful gifts, but eventually die? No one can take away the hurt of a child killed by an unnatural seeming accident, just as no one can ensure it wont happen to another child again. But we all can appreciate the joy of children playing and growing in the shade of the many thousands of safe trees, while remaining vigilent.