Among the other things we're juggling at the moment, next academic year's curriculum is being put together. I'm toying with the idea of teaching a religion and ecology course focused on trees - "The religion of trees," perhaps? Modeled in some ways on 2017's "Not to scale: on sacred mountains," it would give me a chance to dive deep into the growing literature on the sentience of trees, which readers of this blog know I find irresistably compelling. This goes way way back, Robert Frost's "The Sound of Trees" fascinated me already as a child:
I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay. ...
