BOOK REVIEW
Searching for Hope in The Graveyards of Alaska’s Yellow-Cedar Trees
A book review of “In Search of the Canary Tree” by Lauren Oakes.
Death is life’s greatest certainty. Everything returns to the ground, even the ancient species we revere — even the thousands-years-old California redwoods, the oldest of which is considered to be over 3,200 years old.
Sometimes, this certainty of death is painful to consider. In the moments when we struggle to accept our mortality, we tend to put our hope in the promise of the next generation. Youth will always grow in the gaps; the comforting constancy of existence. In the circle of life, life goes on.
Unfortunately, climate change may be rewriting this script.
For species that reproduce infrequently and selectively, rapid die-off caused by a warming world could derail their ability to grow back, a problem that can lead to endangerment and even extinction. This may be the figurative “canary in the coal mine:” parts of our ecosystem are starting to hit their survival threshold in a world that can no longer support them.
In Search of the Canary Tree by Lauren Oakes is thought-provoking nonfiction that may be better described as part nature essay, part science textbook, and part PhD memoir. Cover to cover, Oakes examines the decline of Alaska’s iconic yellow-cedar trees, members of the cypress family that have started to buckle under the relentless pressures of climate change.
There’s no existing cure: nearly a decade ago, scientists determined the yellow-cedars deaths were due to a shortened snow season in the areas they grow. Without snow to pad their sensitive roots, any sudden freeze is powerful enough to damage the trees; sadly, irreparably.
But Oakes intention isn’t to save the trees. Instead, In Search of the Canary Tree questions how the surrounding environment, plants and people, react when faced with the permanence of death. What new life grows within these silent graveyards? How do the locals, people who rely on the yellow-cedars to live or make a living, adapt to their changing landscape?
Oakes starts In Search of the Canary Tree with the summer she spent in Alaska, studying dozens of yellow-cedar communities in various states of dying. After selecting random plots of trees, all of equal size, around Chichagof Island in Alaska, she worked with a small team to determine what the plots could tell her about the future. How many yellow-cedars were in each plot? What condition they were in? Which plants were appearing around the trees?
While science does not a writer make, Oakes maintains the fine line between scientific explanation and prose. Every aspect of her work, from methodologies to terminology, is explained carefully and clearly to guide readers through the impact of her work. For those who want the facts given to them straight, Oakes is prone to digressions — you may need to skim a few paragraphs to get to the point. But her carefully-structured research, both in real time and in the book, forms a clear snapshot of what the forests in Alaska might look like far after the yellow-cedars themselves go extinct.
“Every bit of [work we did],” Oakes writes, describing one rainy afternoon of research in the field, “pointed toward a story of survival amidst loss and death. It was a forest letting go of what was and becoming something new.”
The plant community isn’t the only one adapting to new surroundings. After surveying fifty yellow-cedar plots, Oakes turned her sights to the human side of change. Each party she interviews in In Search of the Canary Tree has been impacted in some way by the dying yellow-cedars.
For Alaskan natives, the trees have cultural significance, a centuries-old ancestry that can’t be replaced. For loggers, patches of standing dead mean more wood to harvest and sell. But no matter the viewpoint, each loss or gain does the same thing: it changes the landscape.
Oakes believes this change creates emotion, a variable science can’t easily address.
In her interviews, Oakes found that people reacted differently to yellow-cedar death. Those emotionally closest to the trees felt helpless, paralyzed by a circle of life that has just … stopped. Others had started to make small lifestyle changes that would help reduce their environmental impact and release pressure on the trees. A few were unfazed.
But mostly, the relationships people have with the yellow-cedars cause a depth of reflection seen in other big events: the death of a family member, the birth of a child, a marriage. “People who were attached to the yellow-cedar trees had the most at stake with climate change,” Oakes writes. “But I discovered that those relationships also motivated them to act.”
Reading In Search of the Canary Tree is like watching a transformative dance between science and humanity. Oakes argues that every species has a climate threshold: the yellow-cedar tree has its threshold, and we have ours. Will we learn from the yellow-cedar, a “canary in the coal mine,” and fill the spaces of loss and die with actions of our own? Or will we let hopelessness silence us?
Climate awareness and behavioral adjustment are necessary in this beautiful, changing world. Our connection with nature is a two-way street.
At its core, In Search of the Canary Tree is a book of three parts — research, community, and emotion — viewed through the lens of storytelling. Perhaps more importantly, Oakes’ tale is a gentle reminder of hope. Despite the constant waves created by climate change, politics, and global distress, hope lives on. It fills our backyards, our local parks, our national forests, and carries its spores on the wind. If we can just navigate our fear and open our eyes, we may find the answers we seek — the hope we need — right where we are.
