Naked treehugger Julianne Skai Arbor lends support to the protection of old growth on Vancouver Island

TreeGirl:

Tragically, people are not connecting our everyday modern consumptive lifestyle with the true cost we are paying for our wood and paper products: habitat destruction and fragmentation, soil erosion, hydrologic disruption, water siltation, wildfire hazards, and extermination of thousands of forest and riparian plant, animal and fungi species. Clearcutted forests are notorious for not being able to recover to their original structure and composition. This all equals the “uglification” and death of Life. We must change our modern value system and our forestry practices worldwide to focus on ecological system integrity.

Canada’s largest Spruce (Picea sitchensis), is The San Juan Sitka Spruce (and also the second largest Spruce in the world). It was with this tree that I did a photo shoot in the rain around the 38 ft (11.6 m) circumference, gazing up at the 205 ft (62.5 m) top. Although this wasn’t my first Sitka Spruce encounter, this was my first making love with a tree in the rain, and it was cold but magnificent embracing the wet moss!

See also the local newspaper article linked in her post, “The naked tree-hugger makes her way to Port Renfrew,” and the artist statement on TreeGirl’s website.

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Art at the Hangman’s Elm

Did you know that Manhattan’s Washington Square Park had its own blog? Me neither. But the Washington Square Park Blog appears to be a fine exemplar of “hyper-local citizen journalism,” at least by evidenced by a recent post about artist Kristin Jones’ plan for a tree-focused “artistic intervention” on Arbor Day 2013. One tree in each borough of NYC would be designated as the focus of a 24-hour multimedia extravanganza.

The tree she has her eye on for Manhattan is at Washington Square – the famous “Hangman’s Elm” (there seems to be dispute over whether it was actually used for hangings) in the NorthWest corner of the park. I did not realize that tree is 330 years old! Incredible.

Jones and her partner were responsible for “Metronome” – the unique clock (or “artwork/digital timepiece, intended as a modernist meditation on the dissolution of time”) that looms above Union Square on 14th Street.

Of the “Hangman’s Elm,” she says: “All these years this beautiful tree was right under my nose. It makes me angry that I never appreciated it until now.”

Read the rest.

Tree-hugging: a proud tradition with roots in India

Another fascinating post from Mike at Under the Banyan, this time from last year, but still relevant as ever.

The first recorded tree-huggers were villagers in Rajasthan, India who sacrificed themselves in 1730 to protect khejri trees […] that their community depended on.

The trees were materially important to the villagers in their dry desert landscape. They provided fodder for livestock and firewood for cooking. Their leaves and bark, flowers and sap were used in traditional medicines. The shade they created was a welcome haven for farmers who toiled in the blistering heat.

Maharaja Abhay Singh, the ruler of Jodhpur, had sent men to fell the trees but a brave woman called Amrita Devi offered to sacrifice her life if it would spare one tree. When the axe-men took her up on her offer and severed her head, her three daughters pleaded for the men to kill them too in place of the trees. They paid the same price.

Don’t miss the rest.