BIOPHILIA

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BIOPHILIA

noun | \ˌbī-ō-ˈfi-lē-ə\

bio = life
 philia = brotherly love or fondness

1. An innate tendency to focus on, and affiliate with, other forms of life.

2. 'The rich, natural pleasure that comes from being surrounded by living organisms.' - Edward O. Wilson.
 

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When I was a child, I would play outside almost every day. In our backyard we had two tall plum trees, with dark brown, slippery boughs that curved upwards. They were no good for climbing, but every summer they produced such a bounty of red fleshed plums that we could hardly eat them all, although I tried very hard. We gave the extra plums to family and friends, and baked them into pies, and even then there were so many piles of sweet smelling rotting plums and little wooden pits on the ground. I vividly remember all this, storing this memory away in the same compartment as the memories of my mother's favourite Iris flowers, the lavender plants, that time I caught a bee in my hands and it stung me, and the tall trees we climbed in at school. There, also, I store the memories of the rose bush thorns, made into rhino horns with a lick of spit, and the tiny green seed balls of the evergreen hedges which my brother and I would pick and throw at one another like pellets. 

Now that I am older, I find myself drawn ever more closely to the outside world. I look forward to those walks and hikes I share with loved ones. If it is my decision, I will choose to meet any friend in a natural place - a park or a wooded area. When I want to be alone, too, I go outside. I also try and bring the outside indoors, as I find myself strangely attracted to potted plants. What is more, I am now working as a gardener, a job I would never have considered taking before. The more I learn of the plants, the more I care about their welfare, and the more I have to thank them for my own state of being. 

Thank you, plants, for nourishing me in every possible way.

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“If we look around, we can now see that those houses in the monasteries and in various camps where people have planted fruit trees, now enjoy great benefit as a consequence of their action. First of all, if there is a tree in your courtyard it creates around it an atmosphere of natural beauty and serenity. It is also obvious that you can eat the fruits from the tree, sit under it and enjoy the cool shade. What was required on your part was a little patience to allow some time for the tree to grow up.”

— H.H. THE DALAI LAMA - SPEECH DECEMBER 6 1990

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THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

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FROM: THE REEF
TO: ME

You crossed the ocean
to see for yourself the atlantis I have created
over the past twenty million years.

We met in calm waters, during stinger season
and you picked moon jellies out of the water
wondering why they didn't dissolve over your hand.

There were an array of parrot-fish, clown-fish,
and other funny fish that day
and a turtle scouring for sea grass near the bottom
down down down
where your ears began to hurt and the bubbles
on your arms escaped creating an effervescence
of oxygen that surrounded you. 

But you must come back, or at least
think of me now and then
for you have only seen an inch of the wonders
that I contain - the rest is about the size of Japan.

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FROM: ME
TO: THE REEF

I will one day return, and hope to
find you in good health then.
I was somewhat worried when
I saw the pale shade
of your corals, now dying.

I cannot deny your beauty, though,
it is evident in every small crevice.

Did you know I was a little frightened
of the big blue spaces on your outer edges,
and of the jellies, transparent ones that
floated too close to my nose,
and of the barracuda that swam beneath the boat?

But I stayed in the water anyways.
There was too much at stake
to go back to the boat;
there were turtles to watch,
anemones to examine, 
and all sorts of
dancing light patterns
to behold.

Besides, the barracuda was watching me.

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RAINFOREST ENERGY

 

GARDEN

OR,
SEEING THE WOOD FOR THE TREES

To see a rainforest we must look at it as a whole composed of many different parts. The trees provide the rainforest with a strong skeleton, in amongst them is the living system. Clinging ferns, vines, fruit, birds, insects, bees, running and still waters. It is a complex web of symbiotic relationships in there. Each Booyong tree can support over 759 species of insect life, alone. Imagine all that life... Garrulous, chattering.

The rainforest is a garden of another kind. Spring arrives, not in the form of new tulips, but in the blooming of things evergreen, in new birdsong and in pendulous nests formed from moss, hanging by threads to branches. 

The gardeners are there too - birds and bats that carry the seeds of the trees to new places, to continue the cycles of rebirth and sweet smelling leaf litter decay. Here is just one example of a symbiotic relationship:

The meaning of rainforest tree fruit...
- to birds = nourishment.
- to trees = a bribe, and a chance for the future tucked away inside, in the form of a seed.

This relationship has existed for around 90 million years. Enter the forest today and you might spot a Wompoo dove, with its brightly coloured plumage, great bearer of seeds along distances, whose gizzards are not harsh and leave the trees precious cargo intact. Their calls are haunting - a deep 'wollock-a-woo'. You may also find the giant Cassowary, a lover of large fruits, one who cannot fly but walks these seeds over the forest floor till they are deposited in some distant place. 

These rainforest seeds must be resilient too. Unlike their meadow thriving neighbours, which are small puffs carried by the wind, rainforest seeds are often large, packing in them all the nutrients needed for growth on a dark forest floor, where leaf litter obstructs the reach of roots.

The trees need the birds and the birds need the trees. With the decline of native animal dispersers - those birds, bats, and mammals that have always transported seeds - comes the decline of the forest itself, through eventual inbreeding and extinction. On the other hand, if we are to continue clearing the forest, then the birds will lose their source of food and shelter, will begin to decline in numbers. This is the undoing of a garden so beautiful and so complex we might never replicate its creation.

 

&

 

CATHEDRAL

It was dark in there. The noise was incredible, almost deafening, layers and layers of chirruping, calling, croaking, chattering, twittering. They say frogs can only hear the call of their own species. I am not so precise, but I am lucky - I can hear many things at once, or focus down on one noise at a time. The simple act of listening has always played out an expansive affect on my being - bringing my awareness ever outwards to the boundaries of my hearing. 

Imagine a cathedral. Towering heights, spires, beautiful down to the details. Inside are the sacred texts, and the treasures - gold cups and the like. A cathedral provides a place of worship, and its form aids the worshipper in the act of lifting the mind to higher matters - helping them to commune with the divine and to remember why we are here in the first place. 

The rainforests of Australia are like dark green beating hearts in a fiery landscape, or like chests full of treasures: inside is held all the knowledge and experience of the world - of fruits and seeds, roots and nuts and berries; of swimming, climbing, rock hopping, in and out of body realisations, touch of bark, smells, sounds, a language to read for those who are literate; of systems older than our present world age, of birds, insects, large growth trees, mud and clay, creeks and waters, boulders tumbled downstream, of the formation of things and ephemeral things - a million swathes of butterflies; of the original dance and music, of medicines old (and new) - as so many medicines have been developed from the plants therein; of stories, beginnings and endings. 

The energy of the forest tells us of things littler and bigger than ourselves - it teaches us humility. Because we sit on a level in-between; at 1 and a half meters high, we can know the details of things - ants crawling on a bough, or the apparition of new growth beside a fallen log. But we might never know what the forest looks like from a taller perspective, nor a longer one. 

I imagined trying to live in the rainforest, and realised I would be a baby in this world - new to all things. In contrast are the elders, the Kuku Yalanji and the Djabugai, peoples who continue to live amongst the trees.

With so much mystery, knowledge and wisdom, the rainforest is like a living sacred text - a kind of temple to life itself. I worship at this temple, and in return the trees will recycle my breath into oxygen so I might go on living.

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LAYERS OF LIFE

the emergent layer
tallest light seekers, home to birds, insects and butterflies.

the canopy
the roof of the forest
spreading above the darkness below
here are the
vines, fruit, flowers,
birds,
and small
animals.

the
understory
is dark
inhabited
by ferns
clinging things,
burrowing
nesting
insects
bees
beetles

the forest floor - shaded, dappled muddy, strewn with leaves, walked by larger birds and mammals searching for grubs, and by the people who have always looked upwards from the roots of things.
roots roots roots.
 

Sun Light

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Plants

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Insects, Herbivores
& primary consumers

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Predators
& secondary consumers

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Decomposers

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