Tree in a city

Image by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay

This story is told from the perspective of a tree in a city.

Plants provide so many things in our lives: furniture, notebooks, food, homes, and even toilet paper. We can learn to eat seasonally, and notice what is made of what.

You can try this yourself – making some plant cordage with straw or strips of bark.

How can we protect plants in these cities, and even in wild areas? What if we were to convert our existing parking spaces, for example, to wild land instead?

One way of rewilding is to retell the stories of how we live now, to inspire and change our relationship. Instead of nature’s "war with man" as a story, can we tell a new tale? Do we know the history of our foods? What would be the story you tell?

For example, perhaps you see a plant as an inanimate thing. But what if it had an inner life? A behavior and a story of its own? Even Darwin mapped the behavior of plants, and found that it was animate, not a thing but a living being searching for the light. Perhaps we underestimate the living plant life around us.