Tree Obsessions: Celebrating the Ephemeral in Long-Lived Plants

In an age of environmental destruction and outright murder of our biological brethren, there is something deeply troubling about humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Technology has left us with mere facsimiles of nature – pixilated abstractions of biodiversity through satellite imagery, decoded strings of DNA – and we have become fundamentally disconnected from actual nature. I will argue that by mindfully engaging in the simple act of observing nature (and obsessing about it) in arboreta, botanical gardens, and our backyards, trees can help us forge a personal and empathic lifelong connection with the “other,” the vast and variant organisms with which we share the planet. As Johann Wolfgang Goethe aptly wrote: “To wander about among a vegetation which is new to one is pleasant and instructive.  It is the same with familiar plants as with familiar objects: in the end we cease to think about them at all.  What is seeing without…