Sharing is Caring

Sharing another piece of writing, because nature is always collaborative, and these words sprouted perfectly from https://emergencemagazine.org/feature/breathing-with-the-forest/ (highly recommended to check this interactive multimedia experience by Emergence magazine and Marshmallow Laser Feast)

"We imagine ourselves as sealed-off individuals, but we are inextricably embedded in a web of life. Our bodies are porous, suffused with the world around us, home to thousands of microscopic symbiotic inhabitants; with each breath, we exchange parts of ourselves with the wider world. Our connection with trees is particularly intimate — oxygen they exhale flows into our lungs and through our blood, coursing from the heart outward through fractal-like branching arteries to feed every cell in our bodies. The rainforest is a place that dissolves the borders we construct around the self. When we look closely at the web of interconnected, symbiotic relationships sharing nutrients, light, and breath, we discover that our idea of separation between one being and the next is an illusion.
(...)
A deep wisdom underpins the processes of rainforest systems, giving rise to the tightly interlinked carbon, oxygen, and water cycles that enable life all over the planet. Photosynthesis drives a dynamic exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen between forest and air. As trees photosynthesize, they absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen and water vapor. This dynamic is exquisitely matched to the needs of respiratory creatures: we exhale carbon dioxide and water, inhale oxygen, and eat the carbohydrates and sugars that plants store in structures such as fruits, leaves, and roots. Rainforest trees act as powerful weather makers, drawing water up from the soil through their xylem tubes and releasing it into the sky. They make their own clouds and rain: organic compounds wafting off leaf surfaces, tree sap, and exploding fungi produce particles—called cloud condensation nuclei or “cloud seeds”—on which the trees’ exhaled water vapor condenses. This forms the river of clouds that hangs above the forest, poised to drench the vibrant ecosystem below with life-giving water. These clouds offer their waters back to the forest, and also to food crops thousands of miles away, supporting the global food supply and feeding a massive global watershed. In growing forests, trees use the sugars produced from carbon dioxide, water, and light energy via photosynthesis as building blocks, trapping the carbon in their trunks, leaves, and soil, a process which acts as a natural carbon sink."

They also link it to a meditative practice of encountering trees to help us paying attention to all the interdependencies of life in a forest: https://emergencemagazine.org/practice/encountering-trees/