…”the forest” – a pseudonym Cheryl crafted for me and I am actually surprised how comforting it feels to refer to myself as the forest.
With about 14.000 strong trees left behind in the Scottish Borders, planted between 2014 and 2015, it fills my heart with pride and satisfaction that I could be instrumental in giving back to my wife’s and daughter’s ancestral land, now largely barren, a spec of its former and, hopefully, future glory.
Having found new home to our family in a quiet corner of my native Romania, presently I am focused on and thrilled by the possibilities we can benefit the world with through a local example of reforesting, rewilding and reforming food provision all at once.
I already see myself foraging for perennial foodstuffs from mushrooms and insects to plant roots, bark, leafy stems, flowers, fruit, seeds, even clay, not to mention the countless memories, experiences that will flood my senses at each outing.
To give this idea of providing food to ourselves (as in us, humans, and other-than-humans alike) a fitting name to express the depth of commitment to the symbiosis characteristic in a dynamically stable ecosystem, I call it Symbiontic Food Provision.
That’s where I belong in life, and afterlife, as a symbiont…
As part of our be the #sustainablechange poetry series, Roland has contributed the following poems inspired by the environment:
