The Web Unraveled

The Web Unraveled

            “At the far end of town where the grickle grass grows and the wind smells slow and sour when it blows, is the land of the lifted Lorax...”  I can write from memory these words that open Dr. Seus´s book The Lorax. I read the story every Friday morning to the children at the School of Environmental Education in Texas for three years, and yet I never tired of the crazy rhymes and the sad story of how the old Oncler, because of his unabated greed, brought destruction to the land of the Truffula trees.  As the story progresses,  the Lorax tries to warn the Oncler, to no avail, of how his production of Thneeds is contaminating the air and the water.  Finally, the last Truffula tree is cut and the whole web of life is unraveled.  Nothing can live in the wasteland left behind. As I see the story of the Oncler repeated over and over again, I wonder if we will heed the warnings before it is too late.

            Just outside of Mexico City is a beautiful reserve called the “Desert of the Lions.”  It is quite a misnomer since it isn’t a desert at all but a forest, and the nearest lion is many miles away in the zoo.  They say that the park was given this name because it was a deserted tract of land donated by the Lion (or León in Spanish) family. On many hikes with my family through this forest, the trees, ferns, mosses, streams, sunlight, and rich earthy smell awakened in me a profound love and respect for God’s creation.  

One morning, as we drove along the winding highway up to the reserve entrance, I  witnessed a strange and mysterious crime.  Many trees were dead along the roadside, some fallen over and some still standing,  their bark gone and their trunks pale in the early light like white flags of surrender.  I was only a girl, but the solemn sadness of that morning is burned into my memory as if with a branding iron.  The forest was dying and nobody knew why.

When we talked to the forest rangers, they told us that the trees of the eastern coasts of Canada and the United States and of the Black Forest in Germany were suffering from the same unknown plague.  The articles in my environmental magazines spoke of  secret  microscopic assassins that roamed stealthily through the forests of the world killing trees without leaving a trace.   It wasn’t until many years later that the environmental detectives were able to decipher the clues leading to the perpetrators of these crimes.  After years of unchecked atmospheric pollution caused by industries, factories, and vehicles, the clouds over the Mexico City valley had become so saturated with chemicals that the trees on the mountain sides were being burned by acid rain baths.  The forests all over the world are dying in a heroic effort to clean the air full of toxins. 

The death of the forests means more than the loss of trees.  Every breath that we have ever breathed has depended on the oxygen processed by billions of leaves around the world.  The food we eat comes from the soil enriched by those same leaves, naturally composted over hundreds of years, and held in place by grasping roots and staunch trunks that protect from the eroding forces of wind and rain.  Thousands of manufactured goods were born from tree seedlings: houses, tools, furniture, pencils, and even the very pages of this book.  The forest habitat is home for creatures known and unknown and for many humans; no one knows how many  insects and plants are yet to be discovered in the different forests around the world.  Humans depend daily on the medicines, food, and fuel for cooking and heating produced by trees.

The loss of the forests is more that just a material, physical, or economic loss.  It represents also a profound spiritual loss.   Throughout time, people have retreated to the forest seeking in the solitude and silentious music of birds, wind, insects, and water the whisper of the God of creation and of their own souls.  Trees have been the subjects and settings for poems, paintings, plays, stories, and sculptures.  In their towering majesty and profound stability, trees somehow bridge for humanity the distance between  heaven and earth.   Trees are the ancients who hold the secret wisdom of the ages in the rings of their hearts and link the history of humanity and the world with present and future.  Trees are the cradles that rock us in our childhood, the projects inspire us in our youth, the canes that support us in our old age, and the coffins that bury us.   The death the forests could very well mean the death of humanity.

Yes, the forests are dying, and their dying is a warning, a horrid portent of what is to come. We have transgressed the principles by which creation was founded and so we have snatched away its potential for carrying out its primary purpose.   The fundamental objective of creation is to praise God, but how can a river polluted with all kinds of toxic substances praise the Creator?  How can the birds sing their praises if  they fall motionless to the earth due to air pollution?  How can the soil give food if it is full of artificial pesticides and fertilizers which rob it of its natural nutrients?  Humanity has opened a chasm that separates creation from its Creator.  We are the ones warned about in Revelation 11:18.  We are the ones who will be judged, for we are “those who destroy the earth.“

“So, ‘catch’ calls the Oncler, and he lets something fall.  It is the very last Truffula seed of them all.”  The Lorax ends with the puzzling word “unless” and a challenge to every reader.  We all have the last of the Truffula seeds in our hands.  “Unless” each of us chooses to plant the seeds and grow back the forest, “unless” we look at the world from a different perspective and change our  priorities, habits, and expectations, “unless” we as individuals and as a society learn to care for our home, the earth, then “nothing is going to get better. Its not.”