Sleep had not been forthcoming and I had two days of volunteering scheduled. One close to home and physical; one further afield and cerebral.
No sleep didn't seem to impact the physical work, though it was interesting that I chose the slog of dragging rather than cutting, coppicing and laying. i think the dragging could have been done by a zombie. In fact, it was.
In total, there were three men and three women. one man was the leader and he tended the fire. I think the women did about 90% of the dragging. And I realised this: cutting involves mastery and dominion; dragging involves only muscle. Really. I think there really is something that allures many people, and more of them cis-male, to tasks that involve dominion. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed it in the past: AND I recognised that cutting down trees did indeed represent a kind of dominion. Now, I don't mind if the tree will regrow (coppicing or pollarding), as then I am almost in service to the tree, but otherwise... it makes me kind of queasy. Some might argue, I'm in service to the greater ecosystem by allowing in more light. My view: give the ecosystem more space so it can grow out and away from that fenced in handkerchief of darkness. In time, its time, a tree will fall and a neighbour too may be damaged and quickly follow on.
That night, a webinar on why we must kill deer and grey squirrels to save trees. Look, I won't rehearse all the evidence-based science, because I get it. But, again, if the trees and the deer weren't only allowed in the tiny pockets of land set aside for them, there wouldn't be such an issue. And, of course, there are so many deer and (introduced grey) squirrels because we killed off all the predators. It's our choice in the interests of us (not all of us) that we don't allow predators back or give the un-handled natural world enough space. So let's STOP FUCKING PRETENDING THAT WE ARE KILLING FOR THE SAKE OF THE TREES. We are doing it ENTIRELY for us. And, entirely for us, we'd nearly wiped out the red squirrel and many others who were formerly hated but are now part of the justification for killing the sturdy, resilient animals that are managing to scrape a living in this cruel and deluded nation.
We wonder why young people feel so little connection with our British wild nature. I'll tell you: because every creature they are likely to see is, in the dominant cultural paradigm, KILLABLE. As vermin (fox, rat, pigeon, crow); as invasive (grey squirrel, muntjac, fallow deer, parakeet); as overabundant (any of the previous, plus roe and red deer, rabbits when we saw them but the latest virus seems to have cut their numbers); as food (cow, sheep, pig, chicken); as some macabre mixture (pheasant); as vector for disease (rat, badger - not that they're likely to see the latter, less so after the death of about 40,000 in this cull). Mostly, they see animals as dead an unmourned (food or roadkill). Nothing a child is likely to see in this country, apart from a few songbirds, if they're lucky, is not regarded as fair game.
Anyway, then, the trip to the University of Birmingham for a Science Day. The BIFoR FACE project is super-interesting - check it out here. We didn't get to see that, but we saw the labs where, as the head white coat put it, they torture trees. "It's great working with plants," he said. "No ethics involved. It's a real pain getting permission to work on animals." I must admit, I felt for the trees. These oaks are being tested for drought resilience.
And these beauties will be inoculated with Acute Oak Decline.
They can set the hours and colour of light, the temperature and the CO2 to exactly what each experiment demands.
In truth, I was hugely impressed with their work, despite feeling unhappy about the trees.
Interesting project! Sounds like quite an effort is going into BIFoR FACE. I've downloaded this paper to read - Building Forests for the Future.