One day, a few months ago, I saw a Ukrainian flag, now a bit faded, fluttering on a pole in a nearby garden. I've admired every such flag since the war began as a sign of not just support but sanity. I decided to do something. I wanted to bridge the divide between the life I live here in peace - being a tree surgeon in the quiet hills of England - to the life of those experiencing war in Ukraine. It seemed a sane thing to do.
I took the closest imaginative leap I could and asked myself: What are Ukrainian tree surgeons doing right now in the war? What sort of life would I have had to become accustomed to if the UK was essentially mobilized for a war against an invading country?
So, I rummaged around online and found a tree surgery company from the Kiev area. I emailed them (in English), probing if I could just ask a few questions about the their work during the war. It seemed a longshot and my expectations were low.
A man, I later learned went by Dimitri, emailed back within a few days - he said that our language barrier would make this difficult. He sounded short and skeptical. But he had responded. So I translated my questions into Ukrainian, and sent them over to him, hoping to overcome this barrier. An uncertain beginning with some promise.
The first response Dimitri sent to my questions explained how he and his team were still working - mainly in firewood processing and sales. "Both our employees and customers need it" he emphasised. They hadn't seen any specific combat. So this allayed my curiosity as to whether they'd been requisitioned to use their skills in some military capacity. However Dimitri made it clear they all felt as if war was now their life - daily involvement and experience of it were inevitable. He added that 5 missiles had struck the night before within 5km of their homes. In one sentence, I drew a visceral link between the news reports that show almost daily (and nightly) missile assaults on major cities such as Kiev, and this man whose life might have been my own, had I been born under a different latitude.
"It is impossible to get used to it, every day someone dies, ten years ago I could not imagine it, I thought we would not need weapons in the 21st century, unfortunately the opposite is true. And realizing this turns the picture of the world upside down."
My head span as I read this.
Despite our shared profession, I wondered if I really should be venturing these questions across the borders of our very different lived experiences. But at the root of my questions was my motivation to not let this war be another news feed in the background - something to become apathetic towards, susceptible to falsification of or to be depersonalized by lists of numbers.
Dimtiri had moved from occupied Donetsk in 2014 when Russia had murkily invaded and annexed the far east of Ukraine. He summarized his life since then as getting "better and better each day" - which for someone under skies from which bombs fall regularly, seemed at odds. It revealed how much I didn't understand about the original invasion, despite having followed it at the time and read books about it since. His life is now processing and selling firewood at scale for heating anything from homes to schools, to grain drying sheds which sit remotely within the vast farming regions where electricity infrastructure hasn't sufficiently extended. He commented on the different burning values of hornbeam, birch, alder and pine. The reality of not being in the occupied east and being within a valuable, even essential industry were clearly empowering. I could relate, albeit remotely, with the positivity of providing firewood to people. The cycle of timber to a heated dwelling is as old as fire itself - it's something fundamental. To give someone the gift of heat that you yourself have processed from a standing tree can feel very rewarding. I also enjoyed hearing about the certain use of pine chippings to draw moisture from concrete mixtures. This conversation could have been over a pint, not over the borders mired by war and geopolitics. All the more reason to sustain it, I believe.
He spoke positively about more than a million trees planted before the war. This project that Dimitri said gave him hope, yet stalled by red tape for years, had finally begun. A million wasn't enough and he hoped more would be planted after the war. In fact, Volodomyr Zelensky pledged a few months before Russia's invasion to plant a staggering 1 billion trees across Ukraine in the forthcoming decade. This plan will see Ukraine out planting every country in the EU's 27 member states, who in combination have set a 3 billion target within the same time frame. From the UK's lake district to the Cauvery basin in southern India, huge re-forestation projects, with sapling numbers planted in the billions, are underway globally and Ukraine, despite being a nation at war, have taken the front foot. 2023's spring planting campaign alone saw 23 million saplings planted. (https://ecopolitic.com.ua/en/news/v-ukrainskih-lisah-visadili-23-miljoni-novih-derev-2/) (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57566701). Not to mention that in a single day, Ukraine planted 4 million trees and boasts the world record holder for trees planted in one day by a single person - Antoine Moses - who is a total hero by the way! See him in action here https://tinyurl.com/y6xb9466
The localised timber industry is clearly of major economic importance across Ukraine's 11.2 million hectares of forest (4 times as much as the UK), creating jobs and a stream of industry as well as shoring up a beleaguered energy system - systematically targeted by Russia's aerial bombardments, sabotage and nuclear reactor poker games. They know that cold winters eat into people's morale as well a great number of other essential services being critically undermined. It's all part of the Kremlin's 'Strategic Operation for the Destruction of Critically Important Targets' - thus far denounced as a war crime by the onlooking world. In this way, Dimtiri's work is part of Ukraine's national struggle to survive.
In one of my messages to Dimtiri I extended an offer to drum up supplies and gear to be sent over to them - I intended to organize a pool from as many arborists I could contact. He replied that he didn't need this. They had all the supplies they needed.
As if the forests offered a protective canopy in many ways, I'm left with an impression of a person situated in a stronghold. From Zelensky's planting pledge, to the various re-foresting initiatives such as Greening the Planet (https://greeningplanet.org/), one of the proactive, forward looking family of projects that are engaging Ukrainians in tackling the climate crisis AND ensuring the resources that their forest provide persist. This is despite the bombs and the lies and the uncertainty spewing from the Kremlin. Dimitri hopes that one day he can invite me to the Ukraine not as a volunteer but as a tourist. His business is beginning to open up sale of their charcoal to Europe. I will provide a marketplace for this on my website in time. His business is called Leshoz - Forest Farm. Both Leshoz's hope and the trees grow with shared roots - those also shared by Ukraine. I just gifted my 1 year old nephew an oak sapling. It felt like a sane thing to do. Universally, planting trees make us take a longer look into the future and invites us to start now to nurture it.
תגובות