MAY 6, 2025 – (Cont.) For the reader discouraged by the regular reminders of our collective dysfunctionality, I recommend planting a few conifer seedlings . . . or a few hundred if you’d like to contribute to the mission of this aging arborist.
The reality of the matter is that it’s hard labor, at least by my methods. The internet is home to numerous videos of demonstrations by professionals or semi-professionals on how to plant a tree. A good friend of mine, the inimitable “Dr. Ravi,” tells me that if I posted a video of me putting a two- or three-year white spruce seedling into the ground, it would soon go viral—the video, that is. This suggestion prompted me, a product of American culture despite my strongest resistance, to ponder how I might monetize the video to my significant financial benefit—and at my age and in my circumstances, how the extra dough would allow me to raise a team-for-hire to relieve me of the labor-intensive back-breaking effort that would serve as the subject of the video that with enough clicks to render me wealthy. Such a whimsical business plan, however, would defeat the most salient benefit of my endeavor: oneness with nature.
I’ve walked our woods uncountable times. On each pass along the trail, each diversion into the woods, each glance around the space I occupy from stride to stride, I notice many things familiar but also always something new. That quarter of the biosphere is filled with thousands of trees, plants, fungi, and I know but cannot see, trillions upon quadrillions of micro-organisms that sustain a miraculous cycle of birth, life, death, and re-birth. Though I mostly walk those woods alone, they remind me of my connection with the rest of humanity in its ever striving, perpetually resilient, infinitely diverse . . . nature, because, after all, everyone is part of “nature” here on the precious planet earth.
Now I take each seedling and hold it by the stem. I consider its roots, a dangling tangle of tentacles by which it sustains itself, drawing nutrients from the soil, and with the help of photosynthesis, feeding and growing cells by astronomical numbers until . . . in a flash of geologic time, that delicate stem with three or four little limbs will grow into a child of a tree, become an adolescent and enter adulthood. Into decades of greater girth and height it will flourish until it hits the celestial ceiling, as it were, forcing admiring human beings such as the grandchildren of this writer to crane their necks and squint their eyes to see the top of the once vulnerable seedling that their grandfather held in his palm before giving the tree’s destiny to goddess Gaia.
I’ve planted hundreds of trees in this place. Eight years in, the DNR bare root pine seedlings have flourished with a survival rate of close to 97%; all 30 of the hemlock seedlings I planted over the past several years have survived thus far, and most look pleasingly robust. The half dozen birch seedlings are all losers, as are close to 50% of the “plug” style white pine seedlings that I purchased from a commercial nursery.
I have no experience with white spruce seedlings or Norway (red) pine, though Norway “volunteers” are super-abundant in certain sections of the tree garden. (This year I ordered 100 Norways simply to meet the minimum order size of 300 seedlings (when added to my targeted species this year, the white spruce (200)). On an experimental basis I wanted to introduce the white spruce to the tree garden but in sufficient numbers to see if any would “take.”
The long and short of this background is that I’m quite familiar with planting techniques for two- and three-year-old conifer seedlings. Key factors are (a) keeping the seedlings cool and moist (but not water-soaked) at all stages prior to teasing their roots into the soil; (b) preventing “J” roots from forming as the result of roots being too long or excessive for the depth and breadth of the hole formed by the planting bar; (c) closing the hole properly—ensuring that the root collar is just below the soil surface; (d) packing the dirt down firmly around the tree stem; and (e) doing a mental rain dance before moving on to the next planting site. Yet, as accustomed as I am to this drill, with each tree I’m nervous. With every single tree I feel like a new parent faced with the awesome responsibility for a completely vulnerable little living creature that must be fed and hydrated, nurtured and ever so carefully placed where it will be forever rooted.
After each tree is in, I worry about it. Will it find enough moisture in this driest spring in years? Will it adapt to climate change—warming temperatures, less hardy winters, more infestations, harder downpours, more wicked winds, more competition from species migrating north? I can easily transfer these concerns to our own species—to US! Will we pull ourselves together soon enough and smart enough not simply to avoid catastrophe, not only to survive, but to thrive?
Before these worries get the best of me, I look at the countless trees around me—the adults in the room. They’ve done just fine, thank you very much, without special handling by humankind. And all the scores, hundreds . . . thousands? . . . of volunteers, seedlings and saplings throughout Björnholm that sprouted entirely on their own (with the help of sun, soil and water), put down their roots and now spread their wings . . . er, branches . . . to thrive,
In the grand scheme of time and space my intervention is but a stir of air. Perhaps one day one of these trees or two or a dozen or two hundred will survive me, the generation that follows and the one after that. Maybe the progeny of these trees will grow old as future generations of our family do likewise. After all, that has been the way of the world for millennia. But I’m getting way ahead of myself. What matters most is what we have in the moment. That is what is to be seized, caressed, shaped, and passed on.
After forming each hole with the planting bar, I drop to my knees on the gardener’s pad. I’m no longer a churchy person, but each time I repeat this motion, I feel a bit as if I’m back in church; in a sanctuary of grace and peace, beauty and creation. And there in that refuge for a few fleeting hours over the span of a couple of days, I feel one with what some would define as God and as I define as god—or more precisely, my awareness of being.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
