Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre

A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea:

When the inhabitant is the habitat

Day 5: Remote Residency at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Ireland, 7/18/22 to 8/13/22, Maria Driscoll McMahon checking in from New York State

Some mornings while walking the forest path behind my house, a particular tree will startle me, as it did so this morning. Twice. On neither occasion was there a discernable breeze, and yet, some imperceptible disturbance prompted this mumbling, and then...silence.

I stood for a while with my phone waiting to catch the sound via video, but the tree would not oblige. In order to simulate the experience, I pushed gently on the tree.

If I were to fancy the tree was actually "trying to tell me something," I would interpret it as a complaint.

Or maybe a plea...

As with much of the planet, this little patch of woods is suffering symptoms of the heat and drought.

In addition to needing buckets of rain, the sugar maples have suffered repeated maulings by spongy moth caterpillars two years in a row. Some trees were almost completely defoliated. It is said the infestations are exacerbated by climate change. Of course.

So are droughts - or the other extreme - floods.

Parched pokeweed, goldenrod in the forest by my house; last photo shows a dry creekbed at Fischer Old Growth Forest, Newfield, NY.

Almost every species of tree is under some sort of threat: almost every forest. Whether besieged by invasive pests, drought, floods, fires, logging, fracking, agriculture, human habitation, development for commerce, rising seas leading to erosion and drowned forests, the proliferation of diseases due to climate change, leveling rain forests for cheeseburgers - the list goes on and on.

If we don't care for the habitats of the earth, their inhabitants will not stand a chance.