“The forest does not know this. It does not think. It just acts. Because it is so good at sprouting, resprouting, reiterating, and repeating the entire process, it can keep up the living and dying for as long as it takes, even if that is a thousand years. The trees are not conscious. They are something better. They are present.”
NYTimes: By arborist and author William Bryant Logan July 20, 2019
“The insistence of wild growth at Fresh Kills Landfill should make us rethink nature”
“At the time of its closing in 2001, Fresh Kills contained more than 150 million tons of New York City garbage. Where there had once been salt marshes and wildlife, gas-emitting hills of garbage rose up to 225 feet high… After the Sept. 11 attacks, a section of the site reopened for a time to serve …as a search and sorting place for remains and effects recovered from the World Trade Center wreckage.”…
“We know how long it takes most kinds of leavings to decay. Organic material goes quickly: cardboard in three months, wood in up to three years, a pair of wool socks in up to five. A plastic shopping bag may take 20 years; a plastic cup, 50. Major industrial materials will be there for much longer: An aluminum can is with us for 200 years, a glass bottle for 500, a plastic bottle for 700, and a Styrofoam container for a millennium …”
“My God, I breathed. It was suddenly, momentarily beautiful. From a coyote’s-eye view, you could see what the trees were up to: Growth, failure, decay and the drip of acid water through the gravel were mixing a dirt out of the detritus. This hideous forest, I suddenly realized, was there to repair the damage done, and not at our bidding. Its intent was not to look good. Its intent was to stay alive, year by year, century by century, until at last it had recycled even the nylon stocking…”
“…We need to change our thinking: Ask not just what these landscapes look like, but also what they are doing. Fresh Kills Landfill taught me that they may be places of struggle and healing as well, particularly when they come to restore what people have deranged.”
