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[av_heading heading=’Tall, dark and wise (Part I)’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY ROMA GONZALES
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Wednesday, March 1, 2017
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IT’S ONLY nine in the morning but the day has been made already upon reading the news of Environment secretary Gina Lopez’s press conference in Butuan City.
“There will be no more cutting of trees,” she said.
And while she only meant Surigao del Sur, Surigao del Norte and Dinagat Islands, it’s probably not too delusive to think — or just dream, at least — that it would be the same someday for the most parts of the country.
Because of the arrogance of man, it’s easy to overlook that every rock and tree and creature has functions of its own to sustain life on earth. Trees, for the most part, are underrated and overabused. It’s that one friend you ignore until you need something from her. What can we say? Excluding humans from the fauna, trees remain self-sustaining. But we are not, and how dare we forget that at the right context.
According to the website of National Geographic, forests still cover one-third of the earth’s surface. However, at today’s rate of deforestation, rain forests would cease to exist in a hundred years. Areas half-size of England are lost every year.
Until a landslide or a flash flood comes, we forget how important they are despite the fact that they supply us with oxygen. They also absorb our carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases, ensuring that that the earth wouldn’t be too warm to sustain life as we know it. They keep forest floors moist and return water vapor to the atmosphere. They are food and home and not exclusively for humans alone although this can be quite easy to forget, again.
It doesn’t take rocket science for a child or an adult to appreciate the mere shade of a tree or its peaceful, positive energy acknowledged universally by humans regardless of their race or politics and whatnot. This energy can extend to the spiritual level, explaining why many religions and myths have at least one mention of a sacred tree. The Bible speaks of a “tree of knowledge of good and bad” and a “tree of life.” Norse mythology has the great ash Yggdrasil that holds heaven and earth together. Malakas and Maganda stepped out of a bamboo (technically a grass but you get it point).
Probably, the sweetest reverence for trees came from Herman Heese who wrote: “Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness…
“…A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.”/PN
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