No trees… no culture?

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is, in the eyes of others, only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself”.

This passage taken from a letter written in 1799 by the poet and visionary William Blake, explains that he not only understood that nature is imagination itself, but that he believed in imagination being a limitless source of beauty and the central pillar to all that it is to be human. In other words, without the “tree that moves some to tears of joy”,  our collective imagination with all of its preposterous and profound contributions to human cultural evolution, would have had no materials with which to create, and no tools with which to fashion the creation, only a dark imagination dead end, with no flaming torch to light the way, all of our understandings and interpretations of beauty would simply not exist.

In 105bc, Cai Lun, an official of the Han dynasty, was watching a wasp queen collect wood pulp from a tree, mixing this with saliva and water he observed her layering another, then another wafer thin wall to her delicate paper nest. Inspired by this, Lun replicated what the wasp had taught him and the rest became history books, maps, poetry, novels, sketch pads, origami, sheet music, money, the list goes onto the paper which gets pressed to the fridge door by a magnet as a reminder. 

The symbiotic relationship between trees and the humble wasp continued with its role in human culture with the provision of ink. Andricus kollari is the tiny wasp that creates the marble galls (small brown balls) that you see decorating oak trees in the summer. These galls are high in tannic acids and once processed produce a fine ink,  so fine that it was the only ink used between the 5th and 19th century, used to scribe pretty much all classic pre-typewriter literature and all classical music compositions, you can find its use in the work of Pliny the elder and Leonardo DaVinci and even, poetically, the charter of the forest which, over 800 years ago, declared new free rights of access to forests across Britain, all illustrated and written using kollari gall ink. The discovery of the combined chemistry of wasp and tree was a magnesium flash moment in time, a game changer in the same way that the internet has been in more recent times, interestingly though, liquid crystal displays have yet to bring the same scale of imaginative impact as paper, Kollari and Lun's creation fed pornography, gaming, selfies and fake news into our lives centuries ago.

Humans are cyclical creatures by nature and rarely take a moment to consider the curious, intertwining revolutions in culture that trees have provided. For example, how much literature (made from trees) is inspired by trees? The author John Fowles suggested that if we continue to chop down trees then “we might as soon start collecting up the world’s poetry...every line and every copy, to burn it on a final pyre; and think we should lead richer and happier lives thereafter”. He is suggesting that by destroying forests and woodland we are rubbishing poems and literature of the past, and degrading the earth from which future literature may grow. The Anglo-Saxon word for beech was ‘bok’, believed to be the root of the English word ‘book’; Thin slices of beech were once used to write important texts upon, and arborglyphs, knife scribed declarations of undying love are traditionally carved into the bark of the beech.

Another giant keystone of human cultural evolution is music, we wonder how many types of musical instruments are made from wood? These incredible machines (Woody Guthrie's guitar) have enriched and coloured our lives with melody, a phenomena more than likely to have stemmed from our attempts to imitate the sounds and songs of nature, a poetic example being that of the whistle mocking the bird that sings from the same tree that grew the whistle, but it goes even deeper than this when we consider sticks and hollowed out logs, arming us with the tools to create beats and rhythms that embellish fire side stories and whip up rituals and furious shamanic ceremonies, yes, trees empowered us with the life force that is dance. Thanks trees!!

Trees have patiently shaped us, they are the first thing we learn to draw when we begin our imaginations journey, they provide the vessel within which we make our final journey, we see our lives reflected in their perfect familiarity, and take solace within the embrace of their verdant cathedral-like grandeur.

We can too easily fall into the trap where we consider our greatest ally as a commodity, after all we live in an age where product is god, the author Kim Taplin in her book ‘Tongues in trees’, asks ‘What can the forest of Arden mean to a child who grows up in a forest of aerials and parking meters only, and whose food comes, for all she is aware, comes not from the branches of a tree but from the branch of a supermarket’.  

Nature is not something purely for our use and disposal. At present, we're not simply chopping trees down, we are mining trees at an unsustainable industrial rate, we can so easily feel helpless and become overwhelmed with staggering deforestation statistics, the urgent and mammoth task of tackling climate change and the need to reduce our carbon emissions, whilst locking  away as much excess as possible. Again, it is trees that will selflessly perform this job, sustaining us whilst filling our lives with beauty and culture and ,oh yes, oxygen. So next time you feel overwhelmed by all of this, just remember that every time you find your foot tapping or throw yourself from a stage into a mosh pit, or having a water cooler moment about a great novel, or marvelling at an artwork, throwing a paper plane  or just making that list for your fridge door, it’s all thanks to trees. 

Find out more about our Infinity Forest commission here.