Earth Month Reflection, 2024

By Karen Maki

Over 20 years ago, my neighbor planned to cut down a redwood. A huge response unexpectedly overcame me. I researched the property deed to see whether tree removal was allowed, walked the street persuading neighbors to sign a petition asking him not to remove it, and suggested to him that we get a mediator. I was unsuccessful. A year ago, a neighbor aggressively pruned a redwood. I still can’t bear to look at the tree.

I look to trees and nature to understand life. I am reassured to see the determination and resilience of life to persist despite fire. Only a few years after the catastrophic 2020 Big Basin State Park fire, I was thrilled to see many new conifer seedlings and new sprouting along blackened redwood tree trunks. Most redwoods over 10 inches in diameter survived the fire.

Redwoods are interdependent with each other and mycorrhizal fungus. Redwoods connect to each other through their roots enabling healthy redwoods to support struggling ones. Redwood roots also connect to mycorrhizal fungus enabling a mutually beneficial exchange of carbon, water, and nutrients.

Trees provide many benefits to the Earth. They create rain by attracting moisture. They also purify water and our air. They produce the oxygen we breathe. They lower the temperature and stabilize the climate. Forests can help us address climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis and storing it in their trunks, roots, and leaves.

If humans lived with an acceptance of our interdependence with the natural world, we could solve our problems of climate change and water shortages more easily. Our forests are our future.

Karen Maki lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been a forest activist for over 20 years and currently chairs the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter Forest Protection Committee.