Pando, November 2018: An ecofuturist reflection on the myopia of humanity
A piece written during my Introduction to Nature, Culture, and Sustainable Studies course. Pando is estimated to be the largest living single organism by mass, a quaking aspen that stretches over 108 acres. Her die-off is just one of many indications of our abject failure to respect the ecosystems we have inhabited for only a short period of biological time. A collective mourning of the loss of a deeper spiritual connection to the underlying life-force. This project is an example of how I love mixing my design practice with poetry, prose, and wider thinking.
Pando as a manifestation of the future - Generated Using Dall-E 2
I feel her roots being compressed, clamped down upon by the hands of man. Held without remorse. She screams in another frequency, in a whole new dimension that we could never hear—nae, one we never bothered listening to. Our glut sophomoric. Pinned on to our hopes of a future filled with greed (and only greed, because we never could accumulate wealth, not true wealth), the web of possibilities spread before us, each path a better option than the naiveté we follow through with--just as her roots reach deep down into the earth, convulsing in rich, life-filled beauty--an interchange of love. One strand represents one root that her life could be, entangled in a spurious fight against the ensnarling forces of time; so too are we. Entrapped in a mesh of possibilities as to what we could be. We dive head first--nae, desire first--off of the cliff. Taking her with us. Pinioned before the execution. Noose awaits. How can we see ludicrousness in the sanity of the daily, when all we see is the habituation of the neon unnatural? She seeks sweaty dark loam, we seek gold. We are not nourished but she is. I plunge my hand into the dirt, feel it push up against my skin, under my nails--I feel renewed. Visceral calm at the centre of the earth.
I bathe under the shade of the Banyan tree. Hug her sacred legs, touch each strut gently before looking up to the folding leaves. Grateful to her unseen brunt work. Grateful that she will outlive me. This tree a thick vine across a multitude of landscapes. Each fruiting body lays its own groundwork, maintains its own integrity.
She reaches her roots, shifts slightly, over landscapes we can only see with technology—she reaches beyond our biology. She has edged out, she has come to be an interconnected net. Conqueror. But her progress was one of harmony. She grew because she provided shelter, food. In Natural Harmony. The Balance was only slightly in her favour, not greed but gifts returned to her in greater bounty. And so she grew; and became the Greatest. She was born from the ice, dropped seed by Squirrel or God. Together, they knew what she would become. She only knew how to be in loving harmony, a present fully present to the Earth she was blessed to inhabit. A song in space, compressed by the vacuum, unheard and yet belting at the top of her lungs in breath-taking splendour. The wind whistled through her branches. Brought the song of the progress of the Anthropocene, but she ignored its belligerence. Remained transfixed in a hypnotic state of thousand-year memorandums. Living old and at the same time writing in her own nativity onto the waiting landscape. Setting the soil. She saw her friends come and go, taken by the force of Extinction, and saw others reborn in unrecognizable ways. But she learned to be friends with their children, and their children learned to be friends with her. Because in her wise roots they recognised Truth. Ultimate. In her roots was power. Her dominion was as large as it needed to be, and larger still. She saw new territories at the rate of new growth, saw higher as each aging member grew to be reciprocally supported—a commune held together by a shared ancestry, as potent a force as the new born suckling the memories of the elders from their mother’s breast, learning how to be. And so She existed.
And so She existed.
Clearcut.
You remain
bent over
Hacking at her mangled carcass
uncaring
She tries to bounce back
redoubling her efforts to spread roots out further
to rejoin anew
every hormone signal sent is swallowed up
each birth demoralising
confusing
anger at her own massacre
As the centuries-old slowly dwindle
no longer able to tell the young not to worry
Picked off one by one
roots left exposed, chewed up nerves
no longer encased in flesh
in no time, she will be nothing
stabbed in the back by one tantrum
But Mother, Gaia, Source, only takes 18 months to renourish. Even on scales of millennia, she will forget all hurt, all injustice enacted upon her, and rebirth herself with remarkable quick turnaround speeds. Her only barrier is Us. The timescales are compressed and expanded. We learn that lesson from Las Gaviotas, Wadi Attir, and the Elwha Dam removal project. All completed in coordination with local Indigenous peoples, guided by their wisdom. The return of mycelium, a duck finding refuge, and salmon returning to swim in a stream again. All are profound indicators, noticed to Us, but they ignore the deeper work She is undertaking. The greater burden of transformation, that is remarkable, that is true progress. The stories of regeneration we have heard throughout the course are powerful reminders that with a little input into a system, there can be ripple out effects more profound and beautiful than we could ever have imagined. There is always an untapped geyser of goodness waiting to blow forth, and maybe we need to work to uncap it, or maybe we just need to step out of its way.
Further reading into the longevity of Pando can be found here: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.1661
