Oh gosh this is such a beautiful thought. If we all had belief systems like this we would live in a much more forested world! Australian forests are a little different - the real old forests, the very few that are left, are places without people ..... Once perhaps, the Aboriginals, but even then the untouched wilderness wasn't even penetrable to anyone. I love the thought of them being wholly wild without even the spirit of humans to taint them... But that's not the case as we replace ancient wilderness with plantations or cause forest fires. Australian forests grow back fast but they aren't as hardy or diverse or climate steady as old growth forests. They are more ghostly in a way. A pale imitation to the past. I don't know, it's hard to explain. Al I can do is infuse THIS land with good spirit and hope the next people feel it and add to it
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Yeah I know what you mean about the ecosystem being hard to explain. When I spoke of old growth I was thinking of the Pacific Northwest of the United States where my grandparents are from and where I spent most of my teens/early 20's. That landscape has lots of old growth redwoods, pines, and berry patches. Where I live now in a dryer landscape of Argentina it is really hard to tell what is old growth because the types of trees we have don't grow quite so tall.
Personally I have always been really interested in pollinators and insects of all kinds. One thing my partner pointed out recently is that a lot of people cut down the bushes and herbs to make grassy patches between the trees. They think they are doing the right thing by leaving the trees - and they kind of are - but the pollinators are then left without much by way of flowers as trees tend to only flower in spring. So, even when people think they are doing the right thing by clearing out brush to prevent fires and making lawns for their kids to play, they are semi-deforesting the area.
Wow, I'd love to go to the Pacific Northwest one day. It seems a lot like where I grew up, well the coast anyway.
I was talking to a woman last week who had been clearing all the bark around her trees (pretty much a small forest) so she can encourage grass there. I was gobsmacked -;that's not how these forests are meant to work. All the life in that fallen matter, gone. All the bugs and small mammals and rotting wood and fungi. People don't understand.
Don't get me started!