When Trees Still Whisper but Are We Still Humans?
When nature speaks, do we still hear? Reflections on our connection to the earth.
My grandmother once said she can hear her old garden’s trees crying when she sold the house and new owners cut them. I thought it was nonsense back then, but now I’m not sure.
Trees are much more interesting than you would think. It’s proven that they release the chemicals when they are threatened. They warn each other and defend themselves with bitter substances to prevent damage. And they can communicate with other trees through underground fungal networks, sharing information about dangers like pests. This hidden world beneath our feet shows just how connected and intelligent nature truly is — if we only take the time to listen.
I call this phenomenon the ‘wood sorrow’ — the subtle, haunting sounds trees make when they are cut or stressed. There is a small part of an art installation at Helsinki Biennial by the artists Band of Weeds, which transforms the vegetal stress of trees into sound.
This clearly made an impression on my 8-year-old son. He just listened quietly, and I could see he was in deep thoughts. He asked how the sounds were recorded, and I told that some sort of sensors must be used. He kept listening. He has always defended trees. He feels anger or sadness when sees cut trees.
This is another work at the Helsinki Biennial. The work of Hans Rosenström features petrified trees that are millions of years old — older than humans. It looked and felt just like ordinary tree. It’s a fossilized tree, dug up from underground. It looks and feels just like an ordinary tree, but it’s petrified — buried beneath the earth for millions of years.
But I found out that actually a petrified tree isn’t wood anymore. The wood material has been substituted with stone, but every little detail of the tree has been preserved in the sediment, a layer of the earth. So it’s kind of false wood.
I started to wonder, are we false versions of humans we once were? We look the same, but inside, so much has changed from our Stone Age ancestors. Humans have always been part of nature, but what if we aren’t anymore? What if time and the pursuit of money have transformed us into something entirely different? Have we ‘false wood’ humans lost something essential about ourselves, just like the petrified tree has lost its original material?
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We think we are smart (us humans), but we still have so much to relearn. I often think about all the gigantic trees that were cut out from their native lands, did they release themselves to the change?, or could their cries be heard long after they were gone? by those few who were willing to hear them? When we sold our house near Chicago, with several venerable trees, we were saddened to hear that the new owners also cut out every single one, and built a two story house instead... If we lose our connection to Earth, we only have ourselves to blame.
Fantastic post Anna💚🌳 Trees are like us. They can communicate, they feel stress, they can cry. They can cooperate . It is science about this. German Peter Wohlleben have a lot of interesting documentation about trees in his books. I often put my arms around trees and hug them. If you put your hand on a tree you can feel its energy🌿💚 we are meant to be connected with nature, it has always been like that. We are all one, part of The Universe.But The modern soceity and media distract us with other things. We have lost much of our spiruality, but we can take it back. Being real humans, conscious and awake/ aware 🌿💚🙏