The seventh issue of Emergence Magazine explores the wondrous world of trees. Contributors include Fred Bahnson, director of grantee partner Food, Health, and Ecological Well-Being Program, and Spiritual Ecology Fellow Alisha Anderson.
Since time immemorial, trees have involved us in a visceral relationship—rooted in our bodies, our consciousness, and our cultures. We breathe air together. They offer fruits, filter groundwater, and hold the earth together. We summon trees in our stories and myths and seek them out for their healing powers. But across the Earth, trees are rapidly disappearing. Whether directly or indirectly, their disappearance has come at our bidding, through deforestation, wildfire, and extraction. Industry and economics have cast a dark shadow over the wondrous world of trees, reducing their complexity to something that fits within our own understanding, our own needs.
The stories in this issue bear witness to wildfire, uncover the memories held within the rings of a tree, trace the origin of the apple, evoke the aromas of trees, and honor the difficult histories that trees have held for our communities. Visit the church forests of Ethiopia, the last remaining primeval woods of Europe, and discover a village in India that is reclaiming a vital and ancient relationship between trees and women.
Featuring films by Alisha Anderson and Jeremy Seifert; poetry by Brenda Hillman; a multimedia collaboration from poet Forrest Gander and artist Katie Holten; an exclusive interview with Richard Powers; a virtual reality experience by Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee; essays by Lauren E. Oakes, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Roger Deakin with Robert Macfarlane, Nick Hunt, Carl Phillips, David G. Haskell, William Bryant Logan, Fred Bahnson, and Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder.