Book lists and CAUSES

Book Lists and Causes

Today, I was reminded of a favorite place, Saddler's Woods off MacArthur Blvd. in Haddon Township, a right hand turn off Cuthbert Blvd. It is a 25 acre old growth forest which has been miraculously protected from the ravenous grasp of both a local school wanting to make it sports fields, and the local shopping center wanting to make it a parking lot. It has been protected by the Estate Will of Joshua Saddler a once enslaved man who worked for a local Quaker farmer named Evans back in the 1800's. Saddler bought the land and a small village grew around him called Saddlertown, which is now one street and a school and church on the eastern border of the little 25 acre woods. Saddler left the forest to be kept in its wild and natural state for perpetuity! I took a tour there once with the Saddler's Woods Conservation Association, a representative group of four tour guides, outstandingly knowledgeable and dedicated women. They have a small science center and meeting hall across Cutbhbert Blvd in a little corner of a street I think is called Buttonwood. Anyhow, they were able to point out the poisonous berries from the nutritious and healing plants, and were able to show how to tell how old a tree was and how to triangulate its height among many many other things.

The hiking paths through Saddlers woods are small but they make you feel you have left the urban environment behind and entered a different world. Suddenly it is quiet except for the whisper of the trees, the chatter of a squirrel or the call of a bird. You don't smell the car exhaust or the smoke from the local burger joints, only the sweet exhalations of the trees. Sometimes, when there has been a significant rain, you can hear the gurgle of the water meandering through the gullies and stream beds in this small patch where the water of Newton Creek still flows in a natural state. Mp/> I was reminded of Saddler's Woods, where I walk whenever I can, by the theme of a book club of which I have recently become a member. We are reading In Search of the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard. The book deals with the interconnected networks both above ground and below ground that are the community of trees and fungi. This theme of the family network nature of trees and forests was first brought to my attention by another book The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Woleben, a German forester. I have read many other books on this theme since and here is a list:

The Forest Unseen, David Haskell

Teaching the Trees, Lessons from the Forest, Joan Maloof

You may have heard about the healing forests of Japan. I had a book about them but I have lost it. In Japan there are forests of specific breeds of trees the exhalations of which have been shown to heal various human diseases in the people who walk among them. Some forests help heal for example, Diabetes!

A few people I met this morning were talking about various causes and we were discussing vegan, vegetarian advocats. I am a lifelong vegetarian. At least two of my freinds are dedicated vegans. An overarching structure is concern for the environment as well as concern for animals. As we speak, the Amazon rain forests, known as the lungs of the planet are being cut down for farming and animal agriculture. My first introductionn to the wastefulness of animal agriculture, besides the ethical consideration, was in the book Diet for a Small Planet, when Frances Moore Lappe shows the amount of grain it takes to make a pound of meat compared to how many people the grain could have fed. On top of that there is the impact on climate change from animal agriculture. Although the book came out around 1970 and was a best seller, you can still order it and it is still relevent.

We were talking about how to prioritize your causes, and I said mine fall into my lap. One of my causes is to care for homeless animals. I have adopted half a dozen cats and the latest in several generations of dogs, a big beautiful Husky Lab mix who was exploited as a back yard breeding dog until the people moved away, taking the puppies but abandoning her in the yard. It is my privilege and my pleasure to give these animals a loving and responsible home environment for the extent of their natural lives. As you may have guessed from the opening paragraphs, I have been a vegetarian most of my adult life, and I have a natural tree filled yard, no lawn - as part of the movement away from wasting water on lawns and using pesticides against wild flowers such as dandelions. In small ways that are available to me, I do what I can to help my fellow creatures, and my environment. Soon it will be spring and time to get bck out and about. If you feel like it, you may wish to join the Saddler's Woods Conservators in their spring clean up. Check out their website for details. If you have a yard, plant a tree, and try to bring some plants that help the butterflies into your yard; I have Rose of Sharon in mine. Also, I keep my cats indoors except for a chain-link CATIO (intended as a dog run, but very useful as a place for the cats to go out through their cat door in a window and sit in the sun without excercising their natural desire to hunt and kill).

Happy Trails! Jo Ann