{"id":7067252,"date":"2026-09-26T07:52:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T07:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/how-to-speak-forest-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T07:52:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T07:52:46","slug":"how-to-speak-forest-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7067252","title":{"rendered":"How to Speak Forest \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way,\u201d William Blake wrote in his most passionate letter<\/a>. \u201cAs a man<\/a> is, so he sees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because we are social apes who descended from the trees and invented language to tell each other what we see, saying is a way of seeing. To name something is to instate it in the family of things, to make it a node in the relational web we call reality. A word can be a pinhole, pinching a vista of complexity to a narrow point, but it can also be a magnifying glass for the invisible processes and nuances that tessellate that complexity. Few things in this world are more complex, more dazzling and dynamic, more irreducible and irrepressibly alive, and therefore more needful of proper naming, than a forest and its fractal, the tree.<\/p>\n

In A Forest Language: Words That Illuminate the Astonishing World of Trees<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), Hannah Fries \u2014 a poet of uncommon potency<\/a> and a passionate naturalist who reverences the crossing point of science and spirit \u2014 rewilds the imagination with words you\u2019ve never heard and words you know in different contexts, from nautical engineering to music theory, that mean something entirely different in the arboreal realm. Together, they constellate a lexicon of wonder that invites you to eavesdrop on ancient silent conversations with gravity, time, and light in the language of hormones and motor cells, revealing a universe of symmetries and deviations, mathematical yet sensual, full of its self-healing wounds and chemical whispers, resinous with metaphors for resilience and self-reliance, for belonging and love, for the art of letting go and the meaning of enough.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Art by Julie Paschkis from The Wordy Book<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hannah writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Although recent research has opened up fascinating new realms of possibility<\/a> regarding the embodied intelligence of the plant world, there is much we don\u2019t know. Trying to understand, we are tempted to compare their way of being to our own, but if we\u2019re not careful, these comparisons can blind us to the mystery of never truly knowing another species. As humans, however, we apply language, our great meaning-making tool, to describe what we\u2019ve learned of their world as best we can. How we do so often says as much or more about us than it does about that of which we speak.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

At their heart, so many of these words and concepts seemed to reflect a blurring of the line between life and death, between the individual and the whole. Forest time operates on a scale indifferent to the rush of human time; it is slower and wider, riding the waves of geologic time, reaching toward spacetime. Always in flux \u2014 always already growing, dying, changing, and regenerating \u2014 the forest embodies the truth that impermanence is a constant state of being.<\/p>\n

A glimpse into this other world requires a shift in thinking. With each glimpse, each shift, a wild ecology of wonder grew up around me. I believe we have to be open to these shifts \u2014 to seeing forests
in a context that is thrillingly different from the one we are used to \u2014 if we are to be better stewards of these ecosystems in our uncertain future. After all, in the end, we are all part of the same great unfolding mystery.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art by Violeta Lop\u00edz and Valerio Vidali from The Forest<\/em><\/a> by Riccardo Bozzi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Each of the sixty-one words comes alive in a essay with the feeling-tone of a prose poem, weaving together science and memoir, etymology and ecology, fact and poetic truth. Some of my favorites are samara<\/em><\/strong> (the winged seed of the maple), preforest<\/em><\/strong> (\u201cthe time and space between forest and forest,\u201d when a devastation opens up the space for a rush of light that summons dormant seeds into new growth), rhizosphere<\/em><\/strong> (the subterranean ecosystem laced with rhizomes, \u201ca world that hums, pulses, nearly glows with activity\u2026 both a microcosm and an intimate, specialized place unique to itself\u201d), whorl<\/em><\/strong> (\u201ca group of branches radiating from the same level on a conifer\u2019s trunk, making a springy resting place for fresh snow\u201d), lenticels<\/em><\/strong> (the pores through which bark breathes), gallery<\/em><\/strong> (the curly hieroglyphics made by the beetle larvae as they feed on the soft phloem between bark and wood), gemel<\/em><\/strong> (\u201cwhen two separate trees become joined together in a process akin to natural grafting,\u201d sharing a Latin root with gemini<\/em>), and bud break<\/em><\/strong> (the moment when the first fragile leaves unfurl in the early spring light that \u201ccomes like a shiver of knowledge \u2014 that, yes, it\u2019s worth it all, everything to come.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What emerges from this lovely book is a reminder that wording is an instrument of worlding; that if \u201cthe word for world is forest,\u201d as Ursula K. Le Guin so prophetically wrote, then to word the forest \u2014 to name its majesty and its mystery, the subtlety and vehemence of the phenomena pulsating through it \u2014 is to reclaim the world.<\/p>\n

If you find yourself in Manhattan, which was once a lush and biodiverse temperate deciduous forest, join me and Hannah for a conversation<\/a> about words as an instrument of wonder:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way,\u201d William Blake wrote in his most passionate letter. \u201cAs a man is, so he sees.\u201d Because we are social apes who descended from the trees and invented language to tell each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7067253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,12136,228532,11960,151095],"tags":[5515,101752,7288],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7067252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-hannah-fries","category-science","category-trees","tag-forest","tag-marginalian","tag-speak"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Speak Forest \u2013 The Marginalian - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7067252\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Speak Forest \u2013 The Marginalian - 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