The trees in my front yard are my favorite things about my home. There are five of them. There is a large Douglas Fir intermingled with a smaller coniferous friend, a dogwood that rests just under their canopy, fighting for its share of water and sun, a sugar maple slowly swaying on the other side, and a small tree of which I know the least about tucked into the very back corner of the yard, providing a perpetual shady and sheltered spot for our storage. They all play host to a wide array of life. An army of birds rests within their canopy. Chickadees, nuthatches, flickers, jays, and crows to name a few. They fly around the trees like it’s their hive. They pick at the suet and seed dangling in the feeders and swoop down to use the bird bath before fluttering back into the trees., There is music sung all throughout the day. With the birds come the squirrels who also make these trees their home. They chitter as they run up and down the trees, chasing each other from branch to branch and across wires and roads until they have disappeared in the canopy. They are trapeze artists by trade, doing what they must to get the abundance of seeds on the feeder. A rabbit or two always finds a good meal during the quiet parts of the day, and at night a raccoon will explore the understory, curious about the smell of the cat’s cage. Every now and then, coyote comes around to see what’s going on. The same goes for stray cat. And let us not forget about the microscopic multitudes that spend their entire lives in and around these trees. There is an entire ecosystem functioning right outside my window.
I got the idea of becoming an emergency manager after hearing about an emergency in the news. Three emergencies to be exact. All within the span of a month, major hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria pummeled Houston and Puerto Rico, causing massive devastation. It was my wake-up call to the realities of what our future world will look like. Climate change was no longer just some vague threat that exists only in the news cycle and in scientific studies in some far-off place; it is real, and it is here. I figured that I could be part of the solution and do my part. What better place to be than on the frontlines, dealing with all the disasters that this crisis will bring? Well, six years later, here I am, an emergency manager with the Federal Emergency Management Agency helping communities adapt to the vengeance wrought by climate change. Never have I felt so rewarded, never have I felt so tired.
It is hard to avoid the feeling of doom that collectively lingers over our heads. The malfeasant cloud is a great multiplier to whatever ails you. Oh, the current political climate isn’t conducive to your mental health? Don’t forget that the world’s on fire. Was today just not your day? I bet it wasn’t for the people who live where that atmospheric river just hit, either. Did you stub your toe? Well, the glaciers are fucking melting too.
I once heard someone refer to this time as the Era of Endless Emergencies, and I’ve been hard-pressed to disagree with it.
Working for FEMA makes you feel like there is a new disaster popping up every week. In August of this year, I watched as floodwaters from melting glaciers rip homes from their foundations in Juneau. I saw a hurricane (yes, a hurricane!) batter southern California and flood Death Valley. I camped in a national park, pretending that a large fire wasn’t burning less than twenty miles away. I followed seven different fires as they grew to become major fires in Washington and Oregon alone. I will never forget the horrific map on Inciweb, a prominent fire tracking website, that showed how Canada’s boreal forests were all alight. And just like everyone else, I watched the news and saw the footage of the ancient and historic town of Lahaina, a wonderful town I had visited just seven months ago, being completely incinerated. Out of all the disasters that occurred this month, this was the one chosen for our ritual of global attention. Amidst all of the outcry and support on social media and the news for Maui, I had to ask myself if I am morally absolved of not donating to recovery efforts because I am a part of the organization doing said recovery.
Across the trees, I have a handful of feeders, which give a lot of the reason for the abundant life around to linger a little longer. The desk in our den has a perfect view of the dogwood, a hotspot for life in our yard. Just by looking out the window, I can see the wildlife in close detail. At all of the hours of the day, something is going on under that tree. Bands of pygmy nuthatch flock around the suet, chickadees converse at the bird bath, stellar jays peck at the seed scattered around the ground, squirrels chase each other to hell and back, and hares freeze when spotted like deer in headlights. I often find myself in the most random moments of the day stopping whatever it is that I am doing to watch what is happening around the trees. Sometimes I’ll take it further and lay out in the hammock outside, facing the dogwood and the firs and just watch. I watch as the birds come and eat, drink, and socialize right in these trees. I am most definitely noticed, but they pay me no mind. I like to tell myself that these birds have seen me often enough that I am merely a fixture of this microhabitat, and therefore privy to their secrets. Because I am part of the “in crowd”, I get to watch as the tiny chickadees fight and posture amongst the others to see who gets access to the best food. I get to see Northern Flickers, with their beautiful crimson patches and bespeckled breasts in detail. I watch with delight as they hang from the feeder upside down and drill into the suet with a long pointed beak. Effective for the suet as it is for the tiny insects that live in the trees of my front yard. I watch as crow soaks its meal before eating, leaving a mess of bone, cartilage, and feathers in its wake. When crow is done, they look at me with curiosity, as if they are asking me if I’m going to do anything about the mess they left; I never do.
I became a birder because of the trees in my front yard. Truth be told, I never noticed them enough before, but now it is impossible to not notice them. There are about ten species that frequent the trees on a regular basis, more during migration seasons. Seeing them every day has allowed me to differentiate species by gender and age by their appearance. But the most rewarding skill has been the ability to differentiate the birds by their calls. The flicker’s primordial echo rings through the summer afternoons, while the towhee’s ghostly calls give moos to cloudy spring mornings. The squawks and alarms of the corvids help me find in my cat Gus when he escapes, and the melodic mating songs of the dark-eyed junco bring an extra feeling of pleasantness on a sunset summer walk. On more than one occasion, I have been able to pull out my go-to birding app and it’s been able to identify five species of birds in a single ten-second recording. The trees in my front yard helped me to fall in love with birds merely by providing a space where they can exist and I could notice. I didn’t have to go deep in the woods to see something wild. Even in some of the most developed places in the world, wildlife still has an opportunity to thrive. It has reminded me that millions of lives, each with their own story, are constantly playing out around us- if we ever choose to notice.
I would say that it is not common knowledge that there are two ecological crises occupying the present age. The first crisis is the widely known climate crisis. True to its name, we have become the weather in the Anthropocene age. We are releasing so much carbon dioxide, methane, and greenhouse gasses that are heating up the world, that we are changing global weather systems as we do. The other, lesser-known crisis is the biodiversity crisis. We are causing a sixth mass extinction. We have decimated landscapes and habitats to the point that they are mere fractions and remnants of what they once were. We have deforested the planet, extracted all of its resources, polluted our rivers and streams, and emptied the world’s oceans for fish. All of this destruction in the name of endless economic growth. It’s hypothesized that one million species will go extinct in this event. And if these endangered species didn’t have enough challenges, climate change is going to add another layer of stress and complexity in their fight for survival.
Some people take solace in the idea that climate change is the earth’s way of fighting back against our destructive ways. It makes sense, the planet has survived for billions of years before us and will continue on until our sun swells into a red giant and engulfs us in its mass. In this outlook, there is a sense of justice in climate change- we as humans have been responsible for so much earthly destruction since we’ve learned to harness the power of fire. It comes with the territory as the most powerful being on the planet, and so we deserve all the destruction that is to come. But there are innocents in this. One million species, each with their own complex and unique way of life, will vanish far sooner than we will. I am a biophile because the concept of life and living is incredible. We are the only planet known for sure where this activity exists. The story of Earth is the story of life, and it has been present for all but a fifth of the four and a half billion years of Earth’s existence. But life moves slowly in our temporal scales. It unfolds, as you will. The Great Barrier Reef is almost six hundred thousand years old; species introductions for islands occur naturally at a rate of one species every thousand years; there are bristlecone pines in Nevada that have been growing since the construction of the Pyramids of Giza. And to think of all of this effort, everything that life has created over the millennia and eras, is being destroyed in a single instant in time. Vanished in one-hundredth of a second on the Earth’s geological clock. It is a tragedy, that is what it is. It is a massacre of the innocents but on a global scale. I am an optimistic person by nature- I have to believe that things can get better and that it’s not too late to save as much as we can, but I am also rooted in realism and logic. I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how things are going to get a lot worse before they can even begin to get better. Sometimes I look around at the world and wonder how things can get worse than they already are.
The trees in my front yard are a whole lot more than just trees in my front yard. They are a part of something much larger, they are a part of the landscape. A landscape, for the most part, that has found a temporary balance with the development around it. My neighborhood is hemmed in by busy streets all around. Two blocks west of us is the major arterial road called Aurora Avenue. It is a long road that traverses the city. It is adorned with late-stage capitalism strip malls, prostitutes, addicts, and young trees fighting to survive on tiny patches of dirt. Their struggle for survival is dominated by car pollution and heat island effects. On the eastern side of the neighborhood, five or six blocks down, is I-5: the lifeblood of Seattle. Tens of thousands of cars drive on this road every day, creating a barrier that is most difficult to pass. So, it is here, between these two arteries of the city that my neighborhood stands, a remnant forest. It is a secluded forest, and at ground level, it is easy to forget that these two roads are nearby. As I walk around my neighborhood, my gaze is always vertical, never horizontal. The trees in my neighborhood soar into the sky, forming walls of green against the gray and blue. They are hundreds of feet tall and have lived far longer than the oldest residents here, including Loretta. They form the skyline around us, allowing all who live here to remember what this place once was for millennia past, rather than the realities of what this place currently is: a quiet neighborhood in a heavily developed city.
It is in this remnant forest landscape that all the life that visits our house calls home. Trees are their lifeblood, serving as home and habitat. They depend on the narrow strips of public land and the patchwork of residential trees to survive. They use it as shelter and cover against the elements and predators. They use it to rear their young and as safety against humans. Without the trees, the songs would be a little less lively, the views a little emptier, and life a little less interesting.
Unfortunately, the threat of losing these trees is ever-present. Despite being one of the most progressive cities in the country, and despite all of its talk about environmental protections and action, Seattle sure does take its trees for granted. The city is growing quickly, and current population projections predict a lot more density and development required to keep up with demand. While I personally do not want to live in a population-dense place over the long term, I recognize the need for rapid development in the area. It is better to build densely than to have urban sprawl. It is a sacrifice for the sake of more natural landscapes and habitats. However, development always seems to have a cost, and that cost is trees. Even when you are a tree-lover, it is surprisingly difficult to notice when a tree has disappeared from the landscape. Has that open spot in the canopy always been there? The city is building a light-rail stop less than a mile from my home, and in anticipation of this, the foundations of giant apartment complexes, rows of townhomes, and cleared construction sites are being erected seemingly every day. The clean-cut stumps are ever-present on my commute to work. What is more frustrating, though, is that these trees that have been cut down never appear to truly be in the way. They are on the outskirts of construction sites, on edges of property where it seems like they can be left alone. On one of the streets next to ours, thirty trees were cut down to expand the sidewalk. It was never indicated that the trees would have to be cut down when the project was initially voted on, and many of the trees could have been saved if the city had taken a more careful approach. A feeling of frustration and anger has been growing in me over all of this needless destruction for the sake of development. A feeling of hopelessness takes over because there is always seemingly nothing that you can do about it. Fortunately, I am not alone in this feeling.
This past summer, a Bellevue-based development company called Legacy Capital tried to chop down a two-hundred-year-old cedar named Luma. Luma is an alleged culturally modified tree. Before colonization and white settlement, indigenous caretakers in the region would physically modify branches of trees and bend them into shapes to serve as way-markers and guideposts. Though not confirmed, Luma is one of these trees made by the Snoqualmie tribe. Luma is a wonderful old tree full of life of all kinds, providing pristine habitat merely by existing. Luma provides cooling shade in our increasingly hot and dry summers to the lot below. Legacy Capital wanted to cut Luma down to build a six-household lot. Original plans for the lot included preserving the tree, but the company decided against it. I can only speculate that it was because keeping Luma would have required more time and money than this multi-million-dollar company wanted to give. It was a perfect example of infuriating corporate greed, a loss for the community at the benefit of the rich. Well, let me tell you, the community clapped back at the thought of cutting Luma down. An entire tree action network bonded around Luma the Cedar to save the tree and hold this company accountable. There was a struggle, but Luma was saved and Legacy Capital, in an attempt to feed the narrative of “development vs. trees” downgraded the housing units from six to two in order to keep Luma. The network has grown from those days of infancy, and buoyed by Luma’s win, has started to undertake the critical and necessary role of checking for reckless development at the expense of trees. Some of their current initiatives included passing an ordinance to preserve all three hundred of Seattle’s alleged culturally modified trees, monitoring for the use of proper permits at development sites when it comes to tree removal, and repealing Seattle’s new tree ordinance that passed in May, which has been described as “a legislative chainsaw”. It is heartening to see this good work spring up. To know that there are people in my community who feel the same way as I do. The poem, After the News, by Quinn Bailey resonates deeply with me:
“It is hard/Not to think/Surely this all/Will crumble/and every step will be called/progress//Take heart/You, who feel so alone/In this world/On fire//Hope is not hopeless//Every day/We find each other/More and more”
Just when I felt most alone watching the destruction of the trees in my own neighborhood, I saw the community rise up in defense. It is a sign of the coming time. A time when people rise together as communities to take care of the land and this earth. It is a mental and societal shift in thinking of how we treat the life and land around us, a shift in thinking as to what we put into the environment and what we take. It is a call to arms and a roadmap out of this era of endless emergencies. It is a revolution in all but name, and it is here.
The continuing story of Luma, the Tree Action Network, and Legacy Capital continued on after Luma’s salvation. Luma was just the opening salvo of a struggle that unfolds even as we speak. Shortly after Luma was protected, attention shifted to another tree named Doug the Fir that Tree Action was trying to protect against reckless development. One Tuesday morning, Legacy Capital hired contractors to show up at the site in unmarked vans and proceeded to cut down Doug the Fir with no permits or prior notice. This was not the first time an attempt on Doug’s life happened, but community members were successful in stopping the tree’s destruction. This time, however, cops were called and members of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) arrived on site as well. Instead of taking action to prevent this clearly illegal thing from happening, the cops threatened to arrest community members who stood in the way of Doug’s death and SDCI didn’t bat an eye, preferring to say “We will investigate this later” to excuse their apathy. This incident helped me realize how much of an upward battle this fight will be. In a recent study done by 350.org Seattle, real estate and development companies were found to be the City’s top polluters. Unfortunately, real estate and development companies are also the nation’s largest lobbyers to Congress, and no other industry comes close to beating them. Even on Seattle’s City Council, there are ties to the destructive industry. Dan Strauss, the councilman who designed Seattle’s tree ordinance (the “legislative chainsaw”) and former land-use commissioner, has close ties to the industry. Despite this long, protracted community resistance during this past summer, Mayor Bruce Harrell has refused to acknowledge these events and issues. We are going against corporate greed, political corruption at worst, and political apathy at best; and we are just some people with spare time and resources every now and then. How can we go up against multi-million-dollar corporations and city politics? And again, this is all occurring in one of the most progressive and forward-thinking cities in the country, if not the world. It has been damning to see the amount of work that is required if we as a society are going to be successful in this time of crisis.
I struggle with that constant call to action. The work is momentous and never-ending. It is far too much for one person to do on their own. And yet the societal pressure for YOU as an individual to fix this global crisis is overwhelming in its own right. I volunteer with conservation organizations in my spare time, I clear my local park of invasive ivy and blackberry, I’m going to school to get a Master’s degree in Natural Resource Management, and I work in emergency management- the literal front lines of the climate crisis. So why do I feel the societal pressure to donate after a mainstream, big-name disaster? Why is it on me to know how to navigate the complex and confusing world of recycling? Why do I feel responsible for stopping every tree from being cut down for rampant development? Why must I constantly lobby my representatives in government to make them care about this vast, global emergency in front of us? The intent behind these asks is there and good. It takes a societal shift to rise to the challenge, and the individual is the building block of society, but the messaging is all wrong. The message of what we can do is delivered to individuals and in isolation. It is “you” when it should be “we”. It leads people to believe that they are responsible for single-handedly curbing, or even stopping, global climate change and a mass extinction event. It doesn’t matter how much time or energy you put into this; you alone can’t stop this runaway train. This work will take everything from you if you let it. Setting these boundaries, however, is harder than it seems. A knife is held to each of our throats, after all, and we have been told that the power to take that knife away rests in our own hands. Would you be comfortable with just letting the knife linger, knowing that there is more that you could be doing?
Anxiety and control, it is a tough combo. Anxious that I have no control over all of this unfolding, I try and grasp hold of whatever I can. It can pull me deep underwater sometimes, and I have had to learn how to let go before I drown. Letting go is trusting that others around me will answer the call to action too. To stand up and do their part. It is an amazing feeling to be right in your trust. The Tree Action Network was born to address this injustice in Seattle. The conversation is shifting from frivolous debates about the validity of our climate change to identifying problems and proposing solutions. As Quinn Bailey said: every day we find each other, more and more.
I’d be foolish to speculate on how the future is going to pan out. It is easy to see the challenges before us, but I think we often underestimate the power of human ingenuity. It has, after all, been the engine of the Anthropocene. I believe that there are solutions just ready to be plucked from the secret folds of the universe. This may be the end of the world, but the end of the world has already happened a billion times over in every war, plague, famine, and natural disaster that has ever struck. At least now we are self-aware enough to see the end of the world coming and our role as a driver in it. Once we as humankind reach that collective consciousness to move against it, I have to believe that we will make all of the right decisions to get through this crisis. We have eradicated disease, sent ourselves into space, and created artificial intelligence. We have the knowledge and resources to prevent the worst of these crises from happening if ever we choose to act on it. In the end, that is what this boils down to: a race. Can we mobilize and change fast enough before the world comes to an end?
As an optimist rooted in realism, I often feel like a paradox. Try as I might, the long road ahead can really bring me down mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We humans of the twenty-first century are truly living in interesting times. Unfortunately for us, interesting times in history have been notorious for its hardship and strife. Fear wraps around my neck, tightening until I have trouble breathing. But when I step out into my front yard and look to the trees, the fear begins to dissipate. I watch as a hummingbird observes an intruder in their home, or how a migrating dove plucks a berry from a tree, or a bee stopping for a quick drink at the mini rock pool I set up. I look around, and I see that life continues. Despite the mountain of challenges before us, most of us still try and make a better world in all the space that we can. The trees in my front yard give me hope, and that is why they are my favorite thing about my home.