When a long-running experiment was established at the Andrews Experimental Forest, cutting ancient forests was at its peak in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, even as our knowledge of their importance was growing, says Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. The forest ecologists believed that studying how old growth logs decay shows how elements of earth, air, fire, and water converge in ancient forest. While scientists are not theologians who study the afterlife, that is what this research plan does by tracking the log's carbon as it disseminates into the broader ecosystem, following the nitrogen from the log to its incorporation to soil, to beetles, to thrushes. Data sheets are already prepared for the scientists who will complete the measurements long after the experiment's designers are gone. While it is ecological science and not theology, this experiment seems an act of faith that shows that in the afterlife of trees, nothing is ever dead, Kimmerer says. “Plant breath becomes animal breath, animal becomes plant, plant becomes fungus, fungus becomes plant, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation that fulfills our deepest longing for union with the earth.
