The crux of this Essay is an attempt to recontextualize what it means to be an organism in an environment. Are trees alive? Are they organisms? Are they something else entirely?
What do trees tell us about ourselves, simple organisms rooted on this planet, able to build our own microenvironments and mould ourselves and our environment in concert? This factors in to Ecology
What might we be able to learn from trees about the ways in which living beings relate to their environments more generally, and how might the tree-environment relation lead us to think about our own environmental connections and futures in new and productive ways?
Put simply, trees express their context in their physical form.
The tree senses its context from the beginning and develops in dialogue with it. Every one of its parts is, ultimately, telling the story of its distinctive context.
By determining which aspects of their surroundings are relevant for their development, trees bring about their own microenvironment. And in so doing, they offer us a way to distinguish mere surroundings from environment
What if, in the age of the Anthropocene, there is something problematic about regarding mobility as an essential feature of subjectivity and agency?
This essay introduces me to the concept of Reciprocal Causation :
Trees express their environments in their form and activity; and the environment is expressed (realised) in and through the trees. The one does not precede and effect the other. They emerge simultaneously and in relation to one another.