Concerning Ents & Conservation

My painting of Treebeard.

A tale of resilience.

“The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.”

One of my favorite Lord of the Rings characters is Treebeard. Leader of Ents. The story of the ents brings us to very potent questions and concerns regarding the status of our National Parks, woodlands, forests and other protected wildlife reserves.

I think it a thing of beauty that Tolkien made trees sentient in the fantasy of middle-earth. Because, of course, they truly are. Their mannerisms and speech are in fact what I would expect. Slow, wise and steady. The ents have many things to teach us.

With so much devaluation, defunding, lack of awareness and education, have resulted in the slow burning and shallowing of our habitats.

And what of industrialization? How many sequoias need to be replaced by developed land. What more is needed for us to live? More walls? Where is the bridge between creature comforts and our natural abode? These are the things I ponder…

The January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires are a top example of how the change in climate has dire plans for our future. 200,000 folks evacuated. 57,000 acres burned. Friends lost their homes. Their schools. Their workplace. Parks. An entire childhood. Normalcy. Wildlife was misplaced. Native plants were up in flames. This is the cost of our inaction. It was truly hard to watch it all unfold and climate grief is real.

In the age of digitalization, life is not what it was before. For better or worse. Help us not stray too far. These waters are deep and why not find our way back to the shores again. Be wary.

If there’s something to hold on to, we must hold onto another. To our humanity. We need it to tread the waters of our own advancements, for we prematurely abuse our own power. In an advancing civilization, we must pause. We must fully contemplate our usage of such technologies. We have the responsibility, as beings of Godliness to protect our abode as we continue to better society.

The Amazon Forest (2.6 million square miles) continues to suffer from deforestation. Again, corrupt governments and greedy global corporations have abused the land for industrialization. They have irresponsibly used fire to clear the forest for their own interests. Indigenous peoples and environment-focus organizations such as GreenPeace have taken this cause under their mighty efforts to stop the lungs of the earth from burning.

In the state of which Pippin and Merry find the Ents is a troubled one. These ancient protectors and shepherds of the forest and its creatures came to defense when Saruman under the command of Sauron targeted Fangorn Forest for distinction.

In the eyes of irresponsible power and malice, the disillusioned become leaders of destruction of no purpose. I won’t compare the leaders of the world to a rogue wizard, but maybe I will. What have they done to show urgency and action towards climate issues?

Treebeard: "Come, my friends. The Ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents."

The guardians of the forest were outraged, enlisting in the war against Saruman with allies - the hobbits, elves and dwarves. In the fight to combat climate change, we must stay passionate. To see any progress is worth it. The quality of our future depends on our actions today.

And so the forest lives on…

Nature will endure. Even when we shed our cloth and sail onward to become the ocean once more. She will prevail. She is of sanctity. Nature knows Her purpose and Her power. She is resilient against all destructive forces. She flows with fire that burns Her anew. She rattles in war from either side of Her lands. Against chemically inclined skies, she protects the seedling.

She will reinvent Herself without our aid.

And yet…wouldn’t it be better if we catapulted Her strength for a better life for all sentience? Won’t you love Her?

At the end of all things, the ents made there way to a new growth, a place called Nan Curunír (Isengard) the wizard’s veil and fortress of Middle-earth, by the newly crowned King Aragorn. They called it Treegarth of Orthanc. Soon they began to rebuild a community of ents and entwives. No longer interested in discord, just new roots.

No harmony exists without the heavens and earth in vibrancy. Energy cannot lie. Love threads this universe. It binds and sets lifetimes in motion. Do you know? Won’t you love Her to health? Return to love. Return to Her.

The pain you feel is stubborness paraded as necessary evil and helplessness. The answer is in our own initiative. Someone here has to cry out and draw out our spines from slumber.

I imagine we’d dance like the dervish, in ecstatic love to steward her into the most gorgeous soil that life can beat. This is Her story. And Our story. A tale I will tell as old as the redwoods that knew me as part of the sea.

I’ve lived a very long time; so my name is like a story. - Treebeard

I hope that we can avoid the self-destructive path that’s painted by ignorance. I hope we live to carry on the story of the land we shepherd like the ents of the Old Forest.

For the best,

Melody