Branham: A balm for climate change is to cultivate soliphilia — a total love for land
Extreme drought has punctured our pocket of paradise. The Roaring Fork Valley is in tectonic trouble. For the first time ever, North Star Nature Preserve is closed. The water levels are at an unprecedented low. Some Aspen leaves have shriveled to a crisp. There is one tree outside my window I’ve watched steadily drain of all their green this summer. They are dying.
What can we possibly do? How do we pray down the rain? Protect the trees from pounding heat domes? Resurrect a river’s roar?
The steady rotation of an impulse to rescue the Earth is an understandable one. But the scale is so vast, the number of trees, plants, flowers and animals impacted so numerous, there is no totality of action that can wholesale prevent what is already underway.
The wilderness in this valley has long been a refuge for me. I go into the forest to forget and remember at once. The wild never misses. I am indebted to these Elk Mountains, these Aspens, these Colorado Blue Spruce trees for how much perspective, peace and patience they offer me. But recently, I feel more worry than relief. Brown conifer needles. Faded Aspen leaves. Another bettle-killed fir. A drying up river.
I do mental acrobatics within myself: “look for the good,” I tell myself. “See the beauty that is still here,” I remind myself. “Nature will adapt,” I declare. Yes, of course there is truth in all these platitudes. And yet, these truisms feel void of body. For if you pay attention, it is utterly impossible not to be filled with a resounding ache for place. The land is suffering. The trees are struggling. The ecological balance of the Earth is completely out of whack.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about “solastalgia,” or the homesickness for place while still in that place. Today, I write about the holy flipside of that pain: “soliphilia,” a total love for land and a responsibility to live in reciprocity with the Earth.
At the essence of my tightening heart, when I see yet another Aspen tree conserve water for the forest by giving up their own life, is a profound sense of love. The simultaneousness flash of heart-breaking/heart-mending “philia.”
A poet and friend of mine, Jacqueline Suskin, who edited an early version of my book “Heartwood,” wrote a poem about this very tension that I want to share here in full. Read these words, maybe out loud to your favorite sacred place here in the valley. Let them do their work on your heart. May these help us move closer towards soliphilia and an enduring sense of care for the land, however that looks for you. For death is never the end of the story in nature.
“Just as true love has nothing
to do with purity, I know that
although I don’t want to watch you die,
I am. I note the daily losses, the parts of you
that shrivel up, the leaving birds
and frogs, the sickened fish
and rivers, the weakness of your breath.
I won’t turn away from you
while you groan under our pressure.
Your witness, I sing of all that human
hands have touched. I make lyrics
to record our damage, where we’ve cut you
as if you were our beard, our hair, our own
to reap. I circle around you as you wither
and push light into your skin, saying
while weeping, I wish it weren’t so.
Death cannot be wished away.
In this final act, your form trembles
and I won’t close my eyes. The last goodbye
will be holy and I know it’s you
who will resurrect without us.”
“To Watch the Earth Die” is from “The Verse for Now” by Jacqueline Suskin. Flower Press — used with permission from the poet.
Jacqueline Suskin offers book and poetry collection editing, which I highly recommend. It is available at jacquelinesuskin@gmail.com.
Dr Lindsay Branham is an environmental psychologist and the founder of The Heartwood Institute. Her book, “Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees,” is available now. She is leading a writing retreat on deep ecology with ACES at Toklat Aug. 29-30. Subscribe to her Substack at https://lindsaybranham.substack.com/.