Humans have a strange obsession with tidying up fallen trees. Fair enough if you need to move them off a footpath or out of a road, but a fallen tree is a gift that keeps on giving. Taking fallen wood for fuel or make something can also make sense, but taking it away because it’s deemed untidy is ridiculous.
First up there’s the should-be-obvious point that if you leave a tree to rot down it will slowly return nutrients to the soil, feeding everything else.
A fallen tree provides a home for fungi – sometimes many different kinds. It also provides homes for insects, and as the holes in it get bigger it may provide a refuge for small creatures as well. The insects homed in a dead tree in turn provide a food supply for birds and the aforementioned small creatures, who in turn provide food for predators. Things eating each other is the basis of how the natural world gets things done.
In parks, gardens and managed woodlands, I think the problem is that humans try to impose weird beauty standards on nature. Decay is part of nature. The urge to impose human values is a very human problem. Nature tends not to grow monocultures in straight lines. We train ourselves to tidy up all signs of death and decay and it is an unhealthy and destructive urge. Dead seed heads feed small birds through the winter months. Long, straggly grass provides insects with homes. Dead trees have an amazing afterlife that, even as decay is underway, is full of new life.
Out there in the real world, decay and growth go hand in hand. One thing dies and another thing rises. Beautiful fungi forms emerge from the rotting wood. Dead trees are a key part of the life of the forest. Humans too often treat decay as something to fight and try to control. It offends us. It reminds us that our faces won’t stay smooth and unblemished. It reminds us that we are mortal. We don’t like being reminded that we are mortal, and so we go to great lengths to hide mortality from ourselves. We worry about afterlives we can only imagine, while failing to recognise the beauty and power of the physical afterlife that turns our remains into something new.
January 29th, 2018 at 11:48 am
I agree. Things dying is just a changing of form. One form dies in the forest and adds to other life forms/ energies.
Unfortunately when we interfere to much we stop the process from happening and in some cases the environment is lost.
January 29th, 2018 at 12:21 pm
Absolutely, we are far too tidy focused and forget that it is from the untidiness of chaos and the falling of one thing and it’s proper decay that new life, and creativity for that matter arise.
January 29th, 2018 at 12:24 pm
Reblogged this on Blue Dragon Journal and commented:
In the great forests of the Pacific Northwest, fallen trees are the birthing place for the next generation. Known as nurse logs the fallen giants provide shelter for animals, nutrients and recycled elements to the often poor forest soils. At least in the wild forests, the trees are left to the devices of time, covered with mosses and lichens and baby trees.
January 29th, 2018 at 5:21 pm
Reblogged this on dreamweaver333.
January 30th, 2018 at 10:26 am
Makes me so happy to see things I’ve helped inspire showing up in the work of others! Of all the kinds of growth to nurture, inspiration is my favorite by far.
January 30th, 2018 at 11:18 am
yes, this is the post I realised I should write after we talking about decay last week 🙂
January 31st, 2018 at 11:59 am
I’ve always felt that the line between being and living and dead is not so fine as it is to humans. Death takes way longer with trees and decaying is part of their dying process and even when a tree’s cut the root structure often lives. Running a Friends group in my local valley I’ve had people on and off suggest the area should be tidier or that accuse of not doing anything (all we really do is litter pick now). When we’ve changed things the valley has often disagreed… I’m very much for allowing it to be as it is right now.
January 31st, 2018 at 6:26 pm
This reminds me of a great short story called “Deadwood” by Joe Hill!
January 31st, 2018 at 7:53 pm
Ooh, not familiar with that!
February 16th, 2018 at 5:27 pm
I love the fungi that pops up around old tree roots in our garden. Rotting down is all part of springing up!
February 24th, 2018 at 7:08 pm
Thanks for the reminder of the fallen!