I have a thing for trees. Not in a morally questionable way, but in a deeper understanding way. At times it feels as if I can see the spirit of a tree and can certainly hear them. I enjoy taking tree portraits and hope that my eye captures the personalities properly. It’s similar of like how a celebrity photographer catches the true essence of the anointed ones…except I’d be doing it with far more trees.
 
I’d always been drawn to the north, in fact the farther north the better it is. One of the many reasons has to do with northern forests. While I like the company of all sorts of trees, I strongly favor conifers and hardwoods. You know the sort…pines, spruce, cedars, birch, maples, aspens. Swell trees, aren’t they? There’s something amazingly comforting about being in their midst. I once chose an apartment because of the huge blue spruce living there.
 
This past April I saw “Earth” by Disney. It was a stunningly remarkable cinematic account of various species and their environments. One scene in particular remains in mind. It depicted boreal forests of far northern Canada. The camera soared above millions of conifers at the change of seasons. The winter’s mantel yielded to the new spring warmth. Boughs, bent with heavy snow, slowly flexed to the Sun. Deep drifts slowly dissolved in the scant spaces between pine and spruce. And as the glorious comfort of springtime reached far into the wilderness the narrator took a breath. When spring came to the northlands, he said, and these trees came to feel the warming Sun, they exhaled and in doing so refreshed the planet.
 
Imagine one big clump of trees having such a stunning impact on the entire world. Memories of those scenes contributed to the decision to defend the evergreens and in doing so, the Earth. One third of the planet’s trees live here. They follow the curvature of the Arctic Circle across North America, Russia and Scandinavia. Nearly 300 bird, 85 mammal, 130 fish and 32,000 insect species inhabit the forests…in Canada alone. Most crucially, as with any tree, boreal locals can lessen the impact of global warming. Every tree planted around the world lowers the temperature through natural evapotranspiration.
 
Bites are being taken out of the boreal forests. Development, farming, hydroelectric dams, mining and industrial pollution are fragmenting and destroying the environment. Given the expanse of forest a bit of mining may not seem so bad. In Alberta the oil sands refinery projects (arguably Canada’s most brutal industrial presence) has seen over 88,000 wells drilled. 741,300 acres/300,000 hectares of forest are being removed to support this.
 
Last month I made a commitment to the Earth to support, in some financial fashion, an agency that protects, re-introduces, rehabilitates, etc a species or habitat. Every month I’ll put my money where my bright ideas are. Last month, as some of you may recall, I adopted a Sumatran Rhino, whose name came to be Benny (after Benny Goodman). This month I’ve joined the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Their broad vision takes in everywhere and everything in the Canadian natural world. I’ve earmarked my donation to preserving the boreal forests and protecting caribou herds. I’m neither Canadian nor make frequent use of parks or wilderness there. I am a resident of Earth and have a fondness for the air those giant trees refresh each spring. In such a light, an address is irrelevant.