Dana Stroschein

There was a completely different column planned for this issue. I was going to tell you about a quiet stretch of forest in northern Wisconsin that has come to feel sacred to me. I was going to write about the way those towering pines made me feel steady when everything else in life felt uncertain. I was going to tell you about losing my phone in the lake, and how, strangely enough, losing it taught me a lesson about priorities and values, and it would have a perfectly poetic ending. It was supposed to be a story about peace. 
Then the forests began to burn. 
I know there are wildfires every year. Fire has always been part of the life cycle of the forest. Some ecosystems even depend on it, like the jackpines. I understand that. But this year feels different. These fires feel different. 
I find myself watching the smoke maps every day, thinking about Ely, my hometown, surrounded by red areas indicating “go” zones that are evacuating. I’m thinking about neighboring Canada. Entire First Nations communities have been evacuated or destroyed. Vast stretches of forest that stood for generations have become ash. Smoke has drifted hundreds, even thousands, of miles, settling over places that have always felt like home. The smoke from the fires is having serious health effects on people miles and miles away from the fire. 
And I can’t stop thinking about the trees. There are trees, very specific trees up the Echo Trail and up the Fernberg Road that hold memories for me. There’s the big tree at the end of Ahola Road that I climbed almost daily every summer. As silly as it sounds, I worry about all of them. 
Not long ago, I learned that scientists have discovered plants under stress emit ultrasonic sounds that humans can’t hear. We don’t know exactly what those sounds mean, but once I heard about that research, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. 
When the fires started, all I could think about were screaming trees. And berry bushes. And all the different plants and medicines that grow throughout the forest. 
Then I thought about the birds flying through skies filled with smoke. Is it burning their eyes and their throats, too? It must be. The deer running. The snakes have nowhere to escape to, do they? The bears, the wolves, the foxes, the insects, the mosses, the tiny lives we rarely notice until they’re gone. Yes, some will escape. Many won’t. 
For me, this isn’t simply a story about a forest fire. In my Ojibwe way of understanding the world, these aren’t just trees. They are relatives. The animals are our relatives. The water is our relative. Even the rocks carry spirit. The Earth isn’t the playground for our lives or a collection of resources waiting to be used. 
She is our first home. She is family. Somewhere along the way, I think many of us forgot that. We spend countless hours in the woods. We hunt, fish, hike, camp, cut firewood, ride trails, and admire the scenery. People drive miles and miles to spend time away from the busy rush of city life to sit in these very woods. 
But how often do we spend time with the woods? How often do we sit quietly, long enough to remember that we belong there? That every living thing around us is sharing this place with us, not existing for us? Communion is a word we often reserve for churches, but I think that the forest has been offering it all along. 
Everything on this Earth was created to exist together in relationship. Tree and mushroom. Wolf and deer. Water and stone. Birds singing and sunrise. And human beings woven into all of it, not standing apart from it. 
Harmony isn’t just beautiful. It’s how life survives. When that harmony begins to break, I think we feel it, even if we can’t explain why. There’s an energy shift or something. 
That’s what I’ve been feeling since the forest started burning. Grief. Helplessness. Powerlessness. I don’t like feeling powerless. I want to help. I want to fix something. Instead, I find myself sitting with an ache that has no immediate solution. And I cry. Maybe that’s what grief is. Loving something enough that its suffering becomes your own. 
I don’t know exactly what the answer is. I know there are dedicated people working tirelessly to fight these fires and care for the land. I know many people love these forests deeply. 
But I also think we could remember something we’ve allowed ourselves to forget. 
The Earth is not simply where we live. She is our home. 
The forests are not scenery and a pretty backdrop for family photos. They are family. And family deserves more than our admiration. Family deserves our relationship. 
Maybe healing begins there—not with believing we own this world, but with remembering that we belong to it, to work with it in harmony and reciprocity. And responsibility. And respect. 
I hope we remember. 
Because I cannot imagine a world without these woods. 
And I cannot imagine how Mother Earth must be feeling.