We have learned that forest fires are nature’s way of clearing out undergrowth stunting trees that take the longest time to become forests. These fires destroy the homes humans build in impossible places that place impossible demands on others. A lucky few like to summer or winter on mountaintops. They clear out natural growth to make little kingdoms of luxury.  They next demand we expend too much of our resources to try to save them when fires – mostly caused by careless humans – sweep over these enclaves of the rich and fortunate. The impoverished and wretched are unnoticed when “natural” disasters visit everywhere else.

In those states where fruit trees outnumber human and animal life, the production of salable crops is so important that acres of infected trees are cut down to protect the rest.  We know of no other way to control the advance of canker here in Florida.  It has gotten to the point where untrained workers with chainsaws indiscriminately enter private property to cut down a fruit tree within a certain distance from an infected grove.  Here is a case where the tree cannot be seen for forests that will be no more.

One of America’s oldest timber and lumber firms is running out of trees to cut down in the United States and Canada. It has found a way to produce fast growing trees in South America.  The time it takes has been reduced by half. Their interest is to reforest willing countries that never had forests there in the first place, to grow the raw material needed to continue the pace of building that stockholders demand in order to keep the level of profits they have come to demand and expect.  It is interesting to note the willingness of Brazil and Uruguay that give tax breaks and other help in order to change the landscape of their troubled countries in order to produce trees.  This is at the same time that unique rainforests in Brazil are destroyed. There are those who hope to become farmers in areas where it is impossible to farm traditionally.  The destruction here eradicates indigenous humans as well as myriads of life forms not seen in any other part of our globe.

The ancient hills in Judea and Samaria in Israel/Palestine are bare except for the forests planted by Jews of the Diaspora.  My family has planted trees in memory of departed relatives and think of the future when these trees are mature to help transform the land into what it was before the ancient armies came.  At one time, the forests in Israel and Palestine could support an ambitious relative of the America squirrel (whose travels were recorded in an earlier essay) who would like a north to south trip through that land without its feet once touching the ground.  If the humans there stop slaughtering each other and plant trees instead, that squirrel might be able to take that trip.