Good Read: A Day in the Life of a Tree

I recently read: A Day in the Life of a Tree by M.R O'Connor of The New Yorker, and it made me think about my current work with young children. i have been working through the idea that we are interconnected with nature, but this has not come without its challenges. I often find it hard to see the similarities between myself and living things that are not-so-humanlike, such as trees.

A Day in the Life of a Tree describes a technology called precision dendrometers which measures how trees change and respond to their environments instantly. Kevin Griffin, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University describes how watching this instant data has changed his connection with trees: “You walk by a tree every day and it looks the same as it did yesterday, as it does tomorrow and the next day, and you hardly realize it’s alive,” Griffin told me. “I have this pipe dream that people will appreciate trees as living, growing, changing, responding organisms instead of seeing them as static on the day-to-day time scale.” I sometimes checked on my tree half a dozen times a day, seeing in the data a vitality I hadn’t recognized before. I made frequent visits to the park, checking on some nest-building sparrows and running my hand over the tree’s mottled bark."

This part of the article in particular resonated with me. Creating an empathy for nature often requires us to humanize it. We have to see it as a living, breathing, changing entity in order to connect with it. I find it interesting how modern technology, something that is often seen as very opposite from being "natural", may play a huge role in becoming more connected with the earth. This left me wondering: How do the values we encourage play a role in what children will consider important later on in life? What new technology will the next generation create? How do we see modern technology as hopeful in relation to climate change, as opposed to hurtful?

I hope this post helps you in your interactions with children in your care. If you'd like to have a conversation, or have any questions feel free to reach me through the contact form on the main page of my blog. Thanks for reading!