May we belong to each other before it’s too late.

I moved to this forest for the air quality. It helped me heal from pollution exposure, chronic fatigue, trauma, and long covid. It gives me more breath, more life every day I spend here. It is a surprise that this somewhat healthy forest existed in the first place. Then, we found it. Unexpectedly, we had enough to get here.

Fuck privilege, it's a miracle.

When I met the forest's previous guardian, I put my hand in his to say hello. With a shock, that touch changed me. I felt the perspective of trees, suddenly my elders. Slow growth. Their mushrooms, saplings, and creatures lived in his skin.

He was theirs.

Gut punched, I felt how fast, how entitled my internal clock was by comparison. I belonged to almost nothing. I wanted it quick. I don't know how long that handshake was. His body bent time, a strange portal. Parts of me, survived from deep past, knew how to belong, knew tree time. They woke up. Ancestors living in cellular memory, forgotten, stirred. Something bigger than either of passed through our palms.

Now I was theirs, too. And I was charged.

Ownership is a dangerous, double edged sword. It is mostly futile, as evidenced by the smoke currently blanketing much of the continent. And, I will wield it for this forest's protection as best I can, as long as I can, with my whole heart.

Because I belong here. 

I've never experienced anything like this place before. The pine needle floor, rotting gently. I can walk on it with bare feet. It's squishy. So many tall, tall trees. The insects, frogs, and birds are loud. The fox drives my coonhound to distraction at night. I have not seen the bear, but I've seen the evidence of her. The owl haunts our driveway. Occasionally, I beat back the spiders from our rafters. Mostly, we live together peacefully. 

Extravagance.

Family.

For the first time in my life, I have a place. I feel wanted. I feel safe.

On Wednesday our house filled with smoke, despite our air filters and its small footprint. I fear for my forest with the smoke settling here, changing the pH of our pond, changing the air, changing the soil. I feel lucky that it is smoke and not another pollutant that the forest has not seen before. At least these creatures understand forest fire, if not the current scale of it.

The vitality I worked so hard to regain is gone in one day. In a few, helpless, toxic breaths, my lungs are swampy.

I am dizzy and slow again. The rain we desperately needed will not come, yet. Clouds of smoke block the sun. It's cold. I'm wearing winter clothes, unwilling to burn anything in our wood stove.

My thoughts are with the forests of Canada and their creatures. Unimaginable horror. I want to scream with rage. Trees, old trees. They take generations of humans to grow. There is nothing "worth" their loss. They do not have "value." We are made from what they breathe out. We live inside their dead bodies, and we burn them to survive the winter. They sequester carbon, hold water, feed soil, and manage temperature.

Trees are our elders, our family, our bodies, our home.

We belong to them.

I grieve the current trajectory of destruction and suffering. I hope we turn it around. I hope we care for each other while we do. There is enough here for all of us when it is shared. May the greed stop. May we belong to each other before it’s too late.