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Travel and Leisure > Outdoors > The Spiritual Ecology of the Boreal Forest
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Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : Josef Graf
Reporting on the spiritual ecology of any given arena of nature becomes a fairly daunting ambition. Consider, for example, the starscape of a boreal night, or the endless conifer forest, or the billions of songbirds celebrating residence through the light-steeped boreal summer. Any of these aspects, while enticing on a journalistic level, wordlessly fill the soul with an experience that transcends estimation.
And the depth and intricacy of nature reflects the nature-human interweave.
Boreal terrain typically has acidic, shallow soil over rocky shield, interspersed with rich peat bogs and permafrost - a landscape that underlies a high level of genetic diversity. Lichens, labrador tea, fireweed, lupines, mosses, kinnickinnick, cranberry, blueberry, and soapberry are predominant over 90% of the non-arboreal ground cover. Thus, the rich genetic diversity is counter-pointed by a small array of species.
Within the human profile, experience of the land reveals co-relations - counterpoints and minimalism, optimal diversity and verdant subsistence-survivors.
When Winter rules. . .
Creative streaming surges beneath Corona borealis and Polaris and Sirius. In the far north, one's soul wakes starkly in the winter, more vividly than in southern locales, to counterpoint the prolonged darkness. Conversely, through the long sun-steeped summer, the sail of soul retreats deeper into reverie.
During the long winter that compels this inner wakefulness, much of nature's physical community is in a somatic state - including plant life, and hibernators like the bear, chipmunk, and ground squirrel. Some residents - beaver, muskrat, and fish - are subdued beneath their icy ceiling. And subnivean beings eke out a living, with fungi, small plant life, insects, and tiny mammals coexisting
under an insulating layer of snow.
Grouse, and even, on occasion, chickadees, during severe temperature declines, burrow into the snow, risking themselves even while seeking safety. And the doorway of death waits on either side - either by freezing or predation.
Within lake and river, oxygen arrangements under the ice present an interesting contemplation. Muskrats, beavers and otters exhale air at strategic spots in the plutonian under-ice realm, maintaining a "breathing account" - a caching of air bubbles, to provide a backup should they need it, numerous little pockets of oxygen against the icy ceiling (CO2 exits by osmosis due to the water's draw, as lakeweed creates a CO2 "deficit").
I watch the raven, lofting with ease over great spans of imposing forest, finding sustenance in diverse sources, defying the wind, playing in the face of its icy gust. Calling across the frozen lake, it voices both mischief and mystery, in a tone not unlike a place within that proclaims a hold on sky and crown of tree, an un-cage-able force unfolding its own bold pinions.
Back from the lake's edge, where a steep rocky grade rises, there is a bright tree growing where little else takes hold. Here, where not even Tolkien's Ent would choose to prevail, the birch thrives, flourishes, offers up sweet nectar, will not be subdued. And my own paper-bark rooting takes hold on the stony cliff-edge of an interior reach.
For the whole version of this article visit the Earth Vision website.
This article was prepared by Josef Graf of the Earth Vision project
- bringing spiritual ecology to environmental issues.
Visit Earth Vision at www.evsite.net
And Insight21 at http://www.insight21.net
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