planting a tree

The extinction of a tree species from an area means the loss of tens of thousands of different ways of being in the world. The particular curvature of its limbs, casting the movement of the squirrel or the myna into a different melody; the unique way its leaf pattern creates patches of light, and variously blurred umbra and penumbra, affecting soil conditions and tendencies towards certain understory species; the biochemical orchestra of the plant drawing out nutritional, allelopathic, medicinal interactions out of all those around it~ this is just a small sample of what is gained in novelty by planting a single tree into an area that no longer harbours that species. We, who tend to view conceptual and emotional differences as strongly as we do physical ones, feel the death of another human being as extinction as well. The environment will never be the same without the multilayered song that that person brought into the world invariably by their simply day to day existence.