A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea:

Roots and Branches

Day 26: 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

A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea 

will screen at the Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre in 2023!

Follow my (monthly) blog for updates to the project at  

 (mariadriscollmcmahon.com)

Life has a way of talking to the future. It’s called memory. It’s called genes.

                                                                                                Richard Powers, The Overstory

We found that trees could communicate, over the air and through their roots. Common sense hooted us down. We found that trees take care of each other. Collective science dismissed the idea. Outsiders discovered how seeds remember the seasons of their childhood and set buds accordingly. Outsiders discovered that trees sense the presence of other nearby life. That a tree learns to save water. That trees feed their young and synchronize their masts and bank resources and warn kin and send out signals to wasps to come and save them from attacks. “Here’s a little outsider information, and you can wait for it to be confirmed. A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren’t shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.   Richard Powers, The Overstory

As is the case in the video,  what happens at the roots of the tree has an effect on the branches.  I have only just begun to discover those roots and branches, causes and effects.  I have a lot of work yet to do. My final drawing/animation/projection (and maybe some other multi-disciplinary works) will be ready for screening/viewing in about a year.  See my web-site blog for updates and announcements. 

Meanwhile, I could not have taken on a project of this magnitude without the help of many people. 

First of all, my Aunt Sylvia Hilfiger née Driscoll, from whom I first learned of the ancestral village called "Baltimore."  Without her explorations I would not have known a thing about our ancestry. 

Aunt Sylvia (in center) in Baltimore a few decades ago

Aunt Sylvia today who is still sharing stories, memories, clippings, photographs!

Margaret Walsh, Dixie Gross, Christine Bedford

From left: Yours truly, Margaret Walsh, Dixie Gross, Christine Hilfiger, 

all descendants of Cornelius O'Driscoll

Margaret Walsh and I were MEANT to meet, which we did just a little over a month ago! Margaret is a distant cousin and was actually born in the house that Cornelius and his family built! She so very generously shared memories and allowed us to finally experience "the clearing" Cornelius commenced almost 200 years ago! When I went to the Bradford County History Museum, I found more than a few documents and articles written by none other than Margaret herself! How lucky are we all to have met this amazing woman, who, not only worked as a registered nurse, but acted as Supervior of her department at the Robert Packer Hospital up until her retirement a few years ago. 

Dixie Gross, another 5th or 6th cousin of mine has done probably more work than anybody on our genealogy.  After corresponding off and on for several years, it was great to finally meet this remarkable world traveler in person a couple months ago!

Christine Hilfger Bedford is my beloved first cousin and daughter of Aunt Sylvia. We grew up together and I cannot tell you how wonderful it is that we are sharing this adventure together! Her students are very lucky to have such a kind and curious teacher!

Many other people helped me in my research - historians, arborists, conservationists, educators, artists...

Bradford County Historical Society and staff:

Henry Farley, President, Bradford County Historical Society 

Matt Carl, Executive Director of the Bradford County Historical Society

Denise Golden, Library Clerk in Research Library

Ms. Pelton, Volunteer Assistant in Research Library

Jonathan Gulyas

Bradford County Conservation District:

Dan Rhodes, Education Coordinator

Adam Chorba, Forest Specialist

Rich Gulyas, Mt. Pisgah Environmental Education Specialist

F.R. Newton Arboretum (Cornell University) staff

Daniel Weitoish, Lead Arborist

Rockwell Museum staff

Epiphany Parish  

(Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church was built by people 

of the 19th century Irish Settlement)

Father Toomey

Secretary: Mary Cole

Skibbereen Heritage Center:

Terri Kearney

Margaret Murphy

Friends, Cousins,  Artists who encouraged, advised, helped me

Cate Bourke

Aurelio Catano

Scott Greene

Richard Gulyas 

Kathy Kirwan, Irish artist (Clonakilty)

River Santina

Séamus Ó Drisceoil, Irish entrepreneur and conservationist (Dublin and Cape Clear)

Marie Deese Driscoll, O'Driscoll Clan Chieftain, Irish artist (Sherkin Island)

Kerry O’Driscoll

Denise O'Driscoll

SPECIAL THANKS: If I started naming EVERY artist/friend who helped/advised/encouraged me, the list would go on forever, but I would like to single out John Knecht for his generosity in sharing a bit of his process with me. I have admired John's work ever since it blew my mind upon seeing it at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY about a decade ago. Not only does it dazzle with its visual feats of animation, but the content resonates long after initial viewings.  Thanks for the inspiration, John!   John Knecht (johnknechtart.com)

Special thanks to: 

Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Ireland

Ann Davoren, Director

Justine Foster, Programme Manager

Louise Forsyth, Front of House Co-ordinator and Communications Assistant

Kate McElroy, Public Engagement Assistant

Jackie O'Callaghan, Administration Assistant

A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea 

will screen at the Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre in a year from now!

Follow my (monthly) blog for updates to the project at  www.mariadriscollmcmahon.com

FINAL BOOK BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1)  The Overstory by Richard Powers | Goodreads 

2)  Sacred Trees of Ireland by Christine Zucchelli | Goodreads 

3)  Wild Woods: The Magic of Ireland's Native Woodlands by Richard Nairn | Goodreads 

4)  American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation by Eric Rutkow | Goodreads 

5)  Remarkable Trees of the World by Thomas Pakenham | Goodreads 

6)  The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben | Goodreads 

7) Barclay Mountain: A History  Bradford County Historical Society (bradfordhistory.com) 

8)  The Fir Tree Map of the Beara Peninsula & South West Cork Sheet map folded 

9) Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit (goodreads.com)

10) An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

11) Lough Hyne – From Prehistory to the Present – Skibbereen Heritage Centre (skibbheritage.com)

12) Skibbereen: The Famine Story by Terri Kearney and Philip O'Reagan

13) Animation Sketchbooks by Laura Heit (goodreads.com)

14) Baltimore Castle: An 800-year History Bernie McCarthy

15)The Chieftain's Daughter by Marie D Driscoll

16) The Textile Trilogy – Destiny Kinal

17) Wisdom of Trees by Jane Gifford

18) Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard | Goodreads

A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea:

A requiem, a cry, a scream, a hope...

Day 25: 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

Tomorrow is the last day of my residency, so I guess it's time to wax philosophical after nearly a month of rapid note taking. It is also a good time to address the purpose of research for artistic pursuits for those who may wonder what any of this has to do with art.  The truth is that even though methods may differ,  many artists are like scientists in their curiosity and fervent desire to know stuff.  Research is one tool available to both scientists and artists. Another less recognized tool is drawing (or painting, sculpture, dancing...etc.) itself.  Yes, Drawing is a tool for learning. It is also a tool for change, but hopefully that idea has become better establihed.

Drawing helps us think better At its core, drawing is a problem-solving tool. Scientists are often avid doodlers, like the Fields-Medal-winning mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, for instance. “The process of drawing something helps you somehow to stay connected,” she explained in a 2014 interview. “I am a slow thinker, and have to spend a lot of time before I can clean up my ideas and make progress.”

Believe it or not, in my experience, the most interesting artists tend not to draw things they know - at least not completely. (The most interesting things seem to be unknowable anyway.) Rather, it seems that artists almost always draw things they WANT to know; abstractions of thought or feeling they WANT to understand; things they WANT to learn - things like rocks and trees and the way the light falls on your face and planets and stars and BEINGS that walk and crawl and fly and speak by rubbing their limbs together until a fusion of bone or cambium turns them all into gemels emerging from shimmering portals of other  dimensions! (See yesterday's post about gemels and you'll see what I did there!)  

Thinking of art as anything other than a tool for the artist's exploration and expression of wonder, curiosity, thought, and feeling is, in my view,  misguided: it is an error in thinking that demands "expertise" but quells wonder in a world where information is instant and ubiquitous (and misinformation even more so!), but wonder is in short supply. 

What the world needs now is love goes the song... but wonder is a close second. In fact, I would say that wonder IS love. 

So...A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea is, first and foremost, my vehicle for learning about forests and trees and lots of other things on its most basic level. Even more so, it is my vehicle for learning about the ways in which forests and trees are like ourselves in ways previously unknown or comprehended. 

It is also as I previously described, a requiem, in part, for forests past, a cautionary tale - no, a cry, a scream - for forests present, and hope for forests future. It is an "offshoot" of my previous project, By the Time You Cut Teeth You Are Already Ancient, which was one part meta-genealogical investigation, one part spiritual quest, one part cautionary tale.

A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea was inspired by walks in the woods and reading Overstory, a book that forever changed the way I think about trees. In it,  Richard Powers, writes like a poet and anthropomorphizes trees in a way that is fully informed by science. It was the anthropomophism that changed me. 

My previous body of work focused on my Irish paternal ancestors; for this project, I wanted to focus on their habitats - those they left behind in West Cork Ireland and those that awaited in Pennylvania.

Also, in order to answer the deceptively simple question that resonated in my brain "If you were a tree, what would you be?"  I needed to learn a whole lot about trees (and "you"). Why is this seeming, but very unsilly question important?  Because we tend to care about things if we can see something of ourselves in them.  Richard Powers understood this in Overstory. Thus, these walks in forests with new eyes - and ears - these talks with conservationists, arborists, natural scientists, historians, artists, and fellow descendants of Cornelius O'Driscoll were essential. (I will name some names tomorrow!) 

Evil is the refusal to see one's self in others.
                                                                    Richard Powers, author of "Overstory"

During my residency,  I met a Chestnut Tree (among many other trees), an oddball overachiever which towered over many of the neighboring trees.  Sadly, the Chestnut, infected with blight, would soon meet the same fate as its predecessors.  Known as the "sequoia of the east," the massive old growth forests of "Penn's Woods" were frequently dominated by American Chestnut Trees. This would all come to an end by the end of the 19th century. 

Since then,  I have discovered that all the forests in the United States (and beyond) are in trouble in one way or another - almost all due exclusively to the short-sighted exploitation of natural resources by European colonists (including my own ancestors) - an exploitation that still happens today. 

Clear-cutting entire forests and burning fossil fuels has led to climate change which leads to extreme weather - including droughts and floods, creating conditions for which our delicately balanced habitats are ill adapted. Another scourge is invasive pests which can be exacerbated by climate change as well. 

Here in Pennsylvania and New York State stately, elegant ash trees are falling prey to the emerald ash borer beetle.During my trip to the F.R. Newman Arboretum at Cornell University, I was saddened to find many of them had been felled and chopped up into logs to prevent further infestation of neighboring trees. 

Infected ash trees at the F.R. Newton Arboretum at Cornell University (left), and in Ridgebury, Pa. 

There are also many threats to Hemlock trees including the wooly adelgig, hemlock looper, and borer among others. 

Beech Leaf disease affects Beech Trees.  Oak wilt can compromise the mighty Oak.  Locust Leaf Miner can maim a Locust. 

Climate Change affects the proliferation of parasites such as spongy moths and other pests (some invasive) as well rendering habitats too wet or too dry. Floods, droughts - all exacerbated by a warming planet can mean the difference between the survival of entire forests or death. 

"Ghost forests" like this one at Botany Bay, South Carolina, are increasing up the east coast as erosion is whittling away at the coastline.

The sad fact is that most 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.  

Francis Eatherington, 

Lone Rock Timber

If we don't learn from the past and our indigenous forebears  - some of whom are still living in harmony with the natural environment - (that's in the U.S., Ireland, or many places on the planet),  the habitats of the earth will decline and their inhabitants will vanish soon after. In the case of the trees of the forests, they are both inhabitants and habitat! If that is true of any other creation, I'm not aware of it at this moment. 

HOPE!


But, yes, there is hope through reforestation efforts worldwide. Planting with biodiversity in mind rather than monoculture will ensure longevity and habitats for diverse species.  Planting trees is not a panacea - we still need to work to reduce carbon emmissions through the use of green technology and energy systems to solve our problems (not to mention population control). But as trees eat carbon, they are a viable and beautiful part of the plan to slow and reverse climate change. Also, restoring forests will solve other problems as well. Restored forests will mean shelter for those who live there - human and non-human beings alike. 

I want to share a small reforestation effort happening in the O'Driscoll ancestral homeland in West Cork on Oileán Chléire (Cape Clear Island), site of Dún An Óir, one of the most forlorn and romantic ruined castles you will ever see.   

Dún An Óir, oil on canvas, by Marie D. Driscoll

Cornelius O'Driscoll, the first of my paternal Irish ancestors to settle in the United States hailed from West Cork. The Cape Clear Woodland project below may be a small undertaking, but if everybody did their part, the planet would become a less threatened habitat.

Alder and birch saplings at Oileán Chléire at the Cape Clear Woodland, Plantings and Photos by Séamus Ó Drisceoil of Dublin, Ireland

Across the pond, a baby ash tree grows wild in the forest where the Suquehannocks once lived,  wolves roamed, chestnut trees grew, and Cornelius O'Driscoll - fleeing famine and hardship - would find refuge for his family in the mid 19th century "unbroken wilderness" of Ridgebury, Pennsylvania. 

Life has a way of talking to the future. It’s called memory. It’s called genes.

                                                                                                Richard Powers, The Overstory

*There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time-- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature-- but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

― Annie Dillard

*I found the Annie Dillard quote on the page of a wonderful artist, poet, thinker in her own right - Lucy Meskill - who has also studied trees in a most stunning way through her art.  This quote also reminds me how much influence Annie Dilliard had over my own perceptions of nature when I was much younger.  "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" is simply one of the most thrilling, meaningful meditations on nature ever.

Locust Leafminer on Trees | University of Maryland Extension (umd.edu)

Hemlock Pests and Diseases - Cook Forest Conservancy

The Overstory - Richard Powers

Chestnuts Roasting... Sequoias of the East - Eat The Weeds and other things, too

Beech Leaf Disease | University of Maryland Extension (umd.edu)

Oak Wilt: Symptoms, Treatments, Spread - How To Identify Oak Wilt

UnDisciplined: why you should be scared about the spread of 'ghost forests' | UPR Utah Public Radio

Unexpected error — Quartz (qz.com)

Home - 1 Billion Tree

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard | Goodreads

A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea:

Hidden Gemels 

Day 24: 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

 What you make from a tree should be just as miraculous as what you cut down. 

                                                                                                  Richard Powers, author of Overstory

Since beginning my residency,  I have explored but the barest minimum of trees. There are so many more species of trees to get to know - not just by name - but by their characteristics, their history, their stories. I have many books I am in the process of reading, but my residency will be concluding on Saturday; thus, my ongoing research will take place in private as is usual for me!  I may continue to blog, though, perhaps on a weekly - rather than daily - basis. 

For today, I'd like to share some of the more unusual trees I've come across. 

While searching for the trees of Ireland in Pennsylvania and New York State,  I ran into several that appeared to be "conjoined" or intertwined as if in a lover's embrace. Sometimes the trees appeared to be of the same species, but in other instances, they were clearly different.  I learned the term for this is inosculation, a natural phenomenon when two trees fuse together. Sometimes arborists intentionally graft trees together. Whether it happens naturally or through human manipulation, however,  these trees are known as "gemels" which translates to "twins."  Inosculation happens when trees grow so close they rub against each other until the growth tissue - or "cambium" fuses together. 

Several examples of "gemels" in Pennsylvania and NY State

This appears to be a very sick tree, but the large "tumor" isn't caused by cancer, but infestation of insects or fungi - usually harmless. They are called "galls" or "burls."

Hemlock Shelf Varnish Fungus

Trees that show these unusual growth patterns are known as rippled beeches. The cause isn’t really understood, but theories include internal damage when the tree is young, water stress or hormone issues. Rippled beeches remain stable as they grow so there is no safety issue.

Evil is the refusal to see one's self in others.
                                                                    Richard Powers, author of "Overstory"

Nothing, however,  is stranger than "normal."

 It’s a miracle,” she tells her students, photosynthesis: a feat of chemical engineering underpinning creation’s entire cathedral. All the razzmatazz of life on Earth is a free-rider on that mind-boggling magic act. The secret of life: plants eat light and air and water, and the stored energy goes on to make and do all things. She leads her charges into the inner sanctum of the mystery: Hundreds of chlorophyll molecules assemble into antennae complexes. Countless such antenna arrays form up into thylakoids discs. Stacks of these discs align in a single chloroplast. Up to a hundred such solar power factories power a single plant cell. Millions of cells may shape a single leaf. A million leaves rustle in a single glorious gingko.

Too many zeros, their eyes glaze over. She must shepherd them back over that ultrafine line between numbness and awe.

“Billions of years ago, a single, fluke, self-copying cell learned how to turn a barren ball of poison gas and volcanic slag into this peopled garden. And everything you hope, fear and love became possible.” They think she’s nuts, and that’s fine with her. She’s content to post a memory forward to their distant futures, futures that will depend on the inscrutable generosity of green things.     

 

                                                                                                     Richard Powers,  Overstory 

 

Gemel or Inosculation (hikeinwhistler.com)

Beech Tree Facts: Purple Leaves and Rippled Bark - Woodland Trust

What Are Burls And Are They Bad For Trees (gardeningknowhow.com)

Photosynthesis | Reflexivity

The Overstory - Richard Powers

A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea:

Weep of the Willow 

Day 23: 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

My love for the Willow Tree precedes my current obsession with trees in general.  I lived on a property with ponds surrounded by Weeping Willow trees which, not only provided beauty and shade, but sheltered various species of birds; a pair of baltimore orioles nested in the tree year after year. Cedar waxwings, little green herons, great blue herons, yellow warblers and more would visit or wade in the pond beneath the willow's branches. I painted Escape more than thirty years ago inspired by the trees.

The willow tree is easy to anthropomorphise.  Its leaves blow in the breeze like long hair.  It droops over ponds - its limbs even dip into water like tears.  Weeping Willows "weep" after all!

It is no wonder the Ancient Irish found the willow tree to be enchanted. It is associated with the feminine, the moon, and is known as the Tree of Immortality.   

Being near willow trees is said to inspire visionary streams of consciousness and is why poets and priests of Ancient Ireland would love to sit in their presence. It was also a tree favored by ancient healers - a predilection not without scientific basis - as there is a substance in the tree that is similar to aspirin. 

Willow trees were frequently planted on grave sites because they were thought to absorb the spirit of the departed. Their deep roots enable the expression of deep emotions which is a sublimation of the pain. 

Willow catskins by Margaret Manning, Skibbereen-based artist.
The male and female catkins are produced on separate trees

Many thanks to Margaret Manning for the photograph she took of  the Willow catkin as it grows in Ireland.  See the Post from FRIDAY, 5 - Day 18 - Irish trees in Ireland! devoted entirely to Margaret's photography and poetry. 

"Wispering Willow Tree Boston Public Garden" by Captain Kimo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

A neighbor Willow tree!

There are many different species of willow tree: the  Weeping Willow is the one most familiar to me. The Weeping Willow grows up to 40 feet tall and it grows fast. What it lacks in height, it gains in proportion as the tree is frequently as tall as it is wide.  It prefers wetter, acidic soil as the tree acts as a sponge. Its root system can spread out far and wide so it is not advised to plant them close to houses or septic systems.  Rabbits, deer, beavers will graze on the trees - although some claim the trees are "deer resistant." 

The Ancient Trees of Ireland - (satmya.ie)

The Wisdom of Trees by Jane Gifford (goodreads.com)

13 Different Types Of Willow Trees To Consider (homesthetics.net)

Weeping Willow Tree on the Tree Guide at arborday.org

Fun Facts About Weeping Willow Trees - PPM Tree Service & Arbor Care, LLC

Weeping Willow Facts: 9 Common Questions, Answered – FastGrowingTrees.com (fast-growing-trees.com)