Charlie stood frozen in the doorway, tears streaming down his little cheeks. 'What's wrong, hon?' I asked. 'The tree,' he said, pointing at the huge Poinciana that lived in our front garden.
A week earlier, a large branch had fallen during a storm and the arborist had arrived that morning to check on the tree. To our dismay, he discovered that it was rotten to the core and would have to go. He just couldn't save it.
The kids cried all the way to the school bus. 'I'm going to cry all day,' said Charlie. 'I loved that tree,' my daughter, Lily, added.
It was dusk when I returned home, but through the dying light I could make out a large scar on the landscape of our garden. The empty space seemed to reproach me.
When I spoke to friends and colleagues about our tree, they all seemed to relate. One colleague spoke of the death of a large Jacaranda in her childhood garden. Another, of his and his wife's valiant efforts to save an old tree in their garden and their delight when it recovered. Other friends spoke of their deep sadness when neighbours sold up, and the new buyers cleared away beloved trees for new development.
Grieving the death of a tree seems to be a common experience, but it struck me that I had rarely heard about it. We often share stories of the loss of loved ones, including family pets, but not the loss of specific trees. Are we less comfortable acknowledging the depth of our relationship with the trees in our lives? Does it somehow challenge our cultural understanding of the natural world and our place within it?
Our earliest recorded framework for understanding the natural world — animism — had no hesitation in acknowledging the depth of our relationship with trees. Religious studies scholar, Graham Harvey, has defined animism as the belief 'that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others'. This cosmology (or way of understanding the nature of the universe) comes easily to children, but has historically been shunned by Western culture as misguided, even heretical, 'anthropomorphism'.
"Not only has this cultural bias blinded us to our reliance on the biosphere — and encouraged us to push it to the very brink — it has also been fundamentally challenged by recent scientific discoveries."
Western faith in the uniqueness and superiority of humanity — and the related idea that we sit, just under God, at the pinnacle of the pyramid of life — has enabled us to justify our exploitative relationship with the rest of the biosphere. This worldview has compelled us to reject any understanding of plants that move them from an easily commodified object into a subject, a 'you' with which we can have a genuine relationship.
Not only has this cultural bias blinded us to our reliance on the biosphere — and encouraged us to push it and, thus, ourselves, to the very brink — it has also been fundamentally challenged by recent scientific discoveries on plant neurobiology and language, and the related emergence of critical plant studies.
Another problem with this reductive and utilitarian understanding is the way that it has ridden roughshod over the relationships that other cultures have with trees. Protesters near the small Victorian city of Ararat are currently blockading the construction of a road duplication project, because of plans to remove sacred trees, including an 800 year old birthing tree that has seen the births of 57 generations of Djapwurrung babies.
In his 2011 book, Plants as Persons: A Philosophy of Botany, Matthew Hall argues that 'cultural-philosophical ideas strongly influence human interactions with the plant kingdom, and humanity possess a multitude of different ways of thinking about and acting toward plants'. He then categories these modes of perception into broadly defined philosophies of exclusion and philosophies of inclusion — with the Western approach clearly falling into the former. He also warns that this 'view of plants as passive resources certainly plays a significant role in our ecological plight'.
While local Indigenous women have submitted an application with Aboriginal Victoria to have the sacred tree protected under heritage laws, this raises deeper questions about our legal system's (ontological) understanding of trees and related ability to provide adequate protection from the ravages of development. When Christopher Stone wrote his seminal essay in 1972 asking 'Should Trees Have Standing?', it was a provocative and slightly implausible question. Now, however, legal systems around the world have started genuinely grappling with this very question — indicating that something is happening in our wider culture that is enabling the law to follow.
On the weekend following the death of our Poinciana, we went to the nursery to find some new trees. We brought home a young avocado and a baby pecan tree, and Charlie helped us to dig new holes in the ground to bury their roots. As we covered them with water and mulch, we tried to imagine the lives they would have in their new home and the relationships that we might forge with them.
Dr Cristy Clark is a lecturer at the Southern Cross University School of Law and Justice. Her research focuses on the intersection of human rights, neoliberalism, activism and the environment, and particularly on the human right to water.