When it's all too much, I turn to nature #1

For as long as I can remember now, every home I have lived in has been enclosed by more and more wealthy people tearing down perfectly fine homes and building gigantic box-shaped houses. They build them right to the fence line, they tear down all the trees to build rooms that will never be used, or garages for two oversized SUVs in a suburban area. It seems that as soon as one is finished, the demolition of another begins - along with my sanity. I turn the music up to drown out the circular saws and the angle grinders, the piercing sounds that were once bird song, but it does nothing but mask the angst. Up goes my blood pressure, up goes the temperatures without the trees, and up goes my rent prices.

And yet, even in all that noise, nature still finds a way to reach me.

There’s a lone river red gum [Eucalyptus camaldulensis] at the end of my street that leans gently toward the road, growing sideways to catch the morning sun. Every time I walk past it, I notice how it’s shaped by what surrounds it—not broken, just changed. It has deep scars in its bark from past storms, and still it stands. These gums can live for hundreds of years. They stretch their roots toward water, even through concrete, even through drought. Watching it reminds me that we can bend without breaking. That longevity is often quiet and unglamorous.

Out bush, I once camped near a grove of ancient snow gums [Eucalyptus pauciflora], their twisted trunks silver and smooth like river stones. After fires, they don’t fall—they sprout new shoots straight from the trunk, a process called epicormic growth. It’s like the tree remembers how to begin again, even when the world around it is ash. That stuck with me. A lesson in not giving up, in resilience as regeneration.

Even in the city, I’ve found solace in the she-oak [Allocasuarina verticillata], often dismissed as scrubby or unremarkable. But these trees are nitrogen-fixers—they quietly improve the soil for the plants around them. They grow in harsh, rocky soils, creating the conditions for life to follow. It reminds me that sometimes, the most powerful acts are the invisible ones. The slow, steady work of healing.

When it’s all too much, I turn to trees. They show me what survival looks like in a changing world. Not just endurance, but mutual care. In a forest, trees warn each other of threats. They send sugars to their young and to neighbours in need through underground mycorrhizal networks—the so-called wood wide web. This isn’t just metaphor. It’s science. Trees like the mountain ash [Eucalyptus regnans] or blackwood [Acacia melanoxylon] are part of vast, interconnected communities. What if we lived like that? What if we looked after one another not for reward, but because our lives were entangled?

I can’t stop the bulldozers. But I can plant something. I can slow down. I can listen to the trees. And in doing so, maybe I can remember a different way to live.