Rob Lewis

In the Black Hills, Lakota teachings understand all beings as relatives bound together through relationship and reciprocity. As industrial forestry, extraction, and ecological disruption intensify, this article asks whether modern logging and restoration are eroding forests’ living memory and complexity.

While the human fear of fire is understandable, the political fear of fire—playing it safe with the political winds on a bill that strips citizens of their ability to contest logging on millions of acres of maturing forest—isn’t. For Democrats in particular, it’s to betray one of their most faithful constituencies.

As I wrote about earlier, in September another mother Orca, Alki, was spotted pushing her dead calf through the waters of the Salish Sea. Two days later, on September 15th, she was spotted without her calf and it’s assumed she’s released it, which is good news as such exertions place a significant strain on creatures already struggling to survive.

The Lummi, who consider themselves related to these whales and have lived amongst them for millennia, say these mother whales are not only grieving, they are communicating, calling out for us to see their plight.

The methods we use, and the words that come with them, seem to be widening the distance between us. What we call the climate is really the earth, and measurement doesn’t always equal understanding.

It’s not that human carbon emissions don’t matter; they matter hugely. It’s that they aren’t the only matter, and are intimately coupled with the land and our treatment of it.