Abstract
Statistically speaking, most species of trees can live to a ripe old age. In the burial area of the forest I manage, tree buyers always ask how long their tree might live … as far as we know, these trees (beeches or oaks), usually live to be between four hundred and five hundred years old. But what is a statistic worth when you apply it to an individual tree?
Tree prognostication? Kaplan–Meier curves applied to trees? This surprise bestseller appeals to many readers outside of the forestry field and might even inspire a palliative care clinician's mind and heart.
The Hidden Life of Trees is a portal into the inner workings of forests through the decades-long expertise of German forester Peter Wohlleben. His unique rendering of his accumulated knowledge distinguishes this book from a more conventional book on trees. Although categorized as nonfiction, Wohlleben has stretched and redefined what we commonly understand about trees and their species. Subtitled What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World, he reconceptualizes tree behavior: how they respond to injury, thirst, their neighbors, predators, and offspring.
Wohlleben proffers scientific evidence that creates a paradigm shift in the way that we view the tree. Rather than passive, static entities, trees behave more dynamically, manifesting forms of communication, feelings, interconnectedness, sociality, purposeful nurturing, consciousness, and value-laden attributes such as sensibility, risk aversion, opportunism, and individual choice. These behaviors have been masked, in part, because the time frame of the tree is decades or centuries long, in stark contrast to that of our world, which is lightning fast and accelerating. Trees act in ways that feel slow motion to a human time frame. As readers discover, chapter by chapter, trees share qualities and characteristics normally associated with the human condition, such as having a sense of time, experiencing pain, having memories, and rearing children. Stopping to consider the inner workings of trees is indeed radical. The author has been both hailed and ridiculed for anthropomorphizing trees.
In Chapter 24, “A Question of Character,” Wohlleben describes three oak trees on a country road in his homeland that form a “commanding presence.” He subjects these three trees to an informal examination. If these three trees have lived and grown together in the same soil, water, and local microclimate, shouldn't they be similar to one another? In most seasons, they look the same; in the fall, however, differences are illuminated by the timing of their leaf drop. From prior chapters, we learned that deciduous trees drop their leaves to prepare for winter, foregoing further photosynthesis (energy creation) to avoid the risks of having leaves if a snowstorm came, potentially crippling or killing a still-leafed tree. Wohlleben looks to the three trees and sees the variation in timing of leaf drop (which is significant) and declares that the trees' character is the determining factor. The vital decision of when to drop leaves is due to one tree being more anxious, sensible, bold, or cautious than its crown-sharing neighbor. An unorthodox concept.
Wohlleben's altered understanding of trees led him to abandon certain of his forestry practices. Early in his career, Wohlleben would girdle trees (completely removing a strip of bark around the entire circumference of a tree), which is a fatal injury. It is a practice used to thin forests; girdled trees die slowly, leaving standing deadwood. Close observation of a girdled tree, its death slowly unfurling over a decade or so, reveals that the fated tree would expend tremendous efforts to overcome the injury–usually in vain. Even more poignant was the community effort that its neighbors and brethren would also mount to save the tree by sharing water and provisioning its roots from below. Wohlleben's former practice of girdling gave him pause and now even causes shame; he considers it barbaric.
Those of us in the palliative care field can be reminded of some of the most precious and foundational of our skills in parallels suggested by this book. Our patients are like trees: some are revered majestic beauties, others forgotten and trampled. They range from the mightiest of redwoods to the most modest of whips often mistaken for weeds. Some are hallowed and honored; still others are unnoticed beauties (or uglies) leaving no sound when they fall about which we humans can philosophize. Similarly, our mindful selves see our patients not as diagnoses or genders but as mothers and fathers, spouses, siblings, and neighbors. When we do our best work, we see beyond even those roles and see our patients as someone's beloved, as skilled and expert in important and difficult tasks and callings and most of all as people facing the most difficult circumstances imaginable: facing their own mortality. We attune to what gives meaning to their lives, what fuels how they behave, and why they act or don't.
Even with the best of intentions, we in palliative care objectify our patients. Although never the intention of a mindful palliative care practice, forgetting that patients are people can happen in the name of self-preservation or efficiency. Just as a well-needed vacation can reset the patterns of the mind, this book can spur new or reinvigorated thinking. Grounding ourselves in the natural world is healthy and seeing interconnection foundational. If Wohlleben can convince many that trees have character (flaws and blessings), can we, without judgment, recognize when we dehumanize our patients?
Wohlleben closes by acknowledging the ambiguity and grand-scale not-knowingness so present throughout the book, as is so often the case in caring for seriously ill human beings:
So many questions remain unanswered. Perhaps we are poorer for having lost a possible explanation or richer for having gained a mystery. But aren't both possibilities equally intriguing?