What can trees teach us? According to a February 10th New York Times article written by landscape reporter Margaret Roach, Harvard University and its Arnold Arboretum have “instigated deep-rooted connections” through a freshman seminar called “Tree.” The course encourages each student “to behave differently in the world and feel more passionately about biodiversity” by pairing up with a single tree (chosen from among 16,000) and forging “a personal and lifelong connection with ‘the other,’ the vast and variant organisms with which we share the planet.”
“The trees do much of the teaching,” writes Roach.
One of the core lessons is to encourage empathy, “to actually love something that can’t love you back.”
The article is a wonderful read.
