Book -- Evergreen  

This art book I’ve created is a ( mainly ) non-profit project to benefit organizations that are helping our last remaining primeval woodlands and wild spaces. It is printed on 100% chlorine-free recycled paper. Composed of original artwork and a series of sequential essays concerning the beauty, ecological significance and related spiritual importance of our remaining wild-spaces; the contents describe a poets journey into the ancient woods, learning about some natural sciences first and then into how those facts pertain to our inner world of thoughts and feelings, our souls. The text and images follow and reflect each other throughout the course. This has taken 20 years to complete. During that space of time, an area roughly half the size of Alaska has been deforested globally; many ancient forests went down, and many animal and plant species went extinct with them. This is my expression and contribution to the world-wide concerted effort to mitigate and reverse the historical course of mass deforestation and the subsequent extinctions.

Ancient forests are special these days; most of us haven’t ever seen one, except in pictures; yet these images remind us of a realm of beauty that once encompassed much of the world’s land surface and wherein much of our ancestry, our mythology and well-being have come from. In old-growth forests we see things like no other place: For when trees are left undisturbed, they take upon deep characters; When forests are left undisturbed, they live in communities, much like humans, and non-humans. In ancient forests we find an intimate association of lifeforms working together to create an incredible place with an obvious harmony and vitality which is quite outstanding in our modern world. 

Forests bring and hold moisture in the land, they create and distribute fresh air; they build soils through millennia. They are at the beginnings of streams and rivers and provide the habitat for a great majority of the Earth’s biodiversity. All life forms on earth require healthy forests, whether we are near or far from them; as the world is round, life moves in a circle.

Now, just in historical time, Earth has lost 80% of its primeval forests due to human intervention. In North America, in about 500 years we have deforested roughly 95 % of the original native woodlands. The roughly 5 % remaining are fragmented and discontinuous in parks and preserves and while there are many animals and plants which mainly rely on these few old-growth ecosystems, these too are at risk due to current climate changes. They are symbolic jewels of what our ancient world was like – the great beauty of what we had lived amongst through our long evolution. 

To put it bluntly, our woodlands are not healthy. And without vast healthy forests we do not have clean flowing streams and rivers, without these, the fish suffer, thereby the birds and those dependent on those fish, so the oceans are damaged thus, climate changes, it comes back around, and as any of these natural facets are disrupted, then all the others will be, too; and this breaking up of the planetary nutrient cycle has been brought to such a high-pitched degree, by, to be clear – urban capitalist industry, we’ve termed the age we live in the Anthropocene, age of man, coinciding with a world-over mass-extinction event not seen for many millennia.

 But I believe any problem can be remedied. In a fast approaching one-world-wide culture, we have the means to come together to re-green and re-wild some, if not a whole bunch, of our entire world environment. Indeed, the interest in this is rising, and the aim of this work is to contribute towards the collective goal of: bringing attention to the plight of the forests, the loss of wild-open spaces with their itinerant wild animals, while to save from logging any more old-growth – and habitat destruction / conversion – to human uses; and simultaneously, into what we can do to change the situation to something positive, for ourselves and all beings of Earth. We should do it now before it’s too late – it’s never too late. 

Humans are capable of a world of our choosing. We can live together in peace. It is possible and we know it, deeply and commonly. We can model our forests after the old ones and repair them; we can re-wild and gain our proper place in the world, like never before, and thereby have more food security and create a friendship society – an ideal to reach for at the least, and the most. Forestry practice can aim for selective logging of single trees while promoting and keeping wild habitat for animals and plants; we can produce our food in ways alternative to mono-culture agriculture. For by doing so, we help ourselves and our descendants, and as is gone through in the book, our ancestors as well. 

I believe we need these few remaining wild places for our very humanity. As our modern world grows ever busier and we grow increasingly distant from our wildness, we need them that much more. They are places of refuge and restoration of our spirits. By saving these places we will be gifting our children. They surely will thank us.

Due to the rather large importance of this situation, I will be giving 95 % of the profits from any and all books sold to environmental organizations working in the Pacific Northwest region of America (to start with) that are helping to save the last of the primeval stands; and equally those who are rehabilitating areas that have been damaged due to logging practices, anywhere and everywhere. This is an issue of global concern, and the purchase of a book will provide a means of directly supporting our forests and receiving something in return, both of these, you may have for your life.

• Please look into the “Prints” page to order a copy, or click the green link above on the right.
  

Thank you

Nathan