April 30–May 13 , 2022
MOUNT WASHINGTON — At forest’s edge and climbing the hills, silver-stemmed red maple trees bloom. Their fuchsia flowers, becoming winged red seeds, appear as a mist of color painting the awakening canopy. Smooth, grey, American beech branches extend long, slender, golden-brown capsules — silk-lined leaf and flower buds cracking open at their tips. An abundance of diminutive, wide-open cones dangle from fan-like branches of needle-leaved, rounded pyramid-shaped hemlocks. High up, reaching limbs stretch endless wild circuitry soon to be obscured by a continuous leafy canopy.
When hillside forests light up with soft white patches, we know where each amelanchier, Shadbush, is in full bloom, and that there are likely shad fish runs in New England rivers. When shadbush leaves appear, as shown in the photograph above, these exquisite understory trees — that grow to 60 feet — are beginning to set seed. At their best, small, rosy-colored Juneberry or Serviceberry fruits are delicious, as are the bony shad fish when smoked by local fishing communities. While Juneberry alludes to a calendar date, the Serviceberry moniker also associates the plant’s significance in marking the progress of the spring season. Serviceberries coincide with the return of services, e.g. transportation and visiting clergy, to backcountry locations.
What are your life-to-landscape markers?
In the Berkshires, we are close to forests or live in a forest. The structure of forests, highly evolved ecosystems living for hundreds to thousands of years, make life possible. So how is it that all around us we see trees and forests being cut down for roads to remote homebuilding, for lawns or ornamental landscaping? From every corner of the world we hear that we must preserve and protect trees and forests for our own preservation and for the planet’s future.
The forest is the root of all life; it is the womb that revives our biological instincts, that deepens our intelligence and increases our sensitivity as human beings, according to Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki.
Another understory shrub, Red-berried Elder, conveys the magic of the forest’s layered composition.
A soon-to-be-published book, born of the life’s work of Miyawaki, encourages us to participate in the forest’s life force and instructs us to plant small, complex forests — as distinguished from “planting trees” — in disturbed and vacant areas everywhere. Gracefully written by sustainability researcher Hannah Lewis, “Mini-Forest Revolution: Using the Miyawaki Method to Rapidly Rewild the World,” will be released by Chelsea Green in early June. The book is compelling especially for community leaders, parents, and educators who can initiate local and regional forest installations of any size or shape, preferably starting with the dimensions of a tennis court, or six parking spaces. Study this diagram, study a local forest, find direction in Hannah’s book and join the movement to contribute to the Earth’s health.
