Sometimes I think trees know more about patience than any human ever will. I have sat under old ceiba trees whose branches cradle entire ecosystems: birds nesting in the canopy, ants traveling highways along the bark, orchids clinging to limbs that have survived storms more powerful than any chainsaw. These trees do not shout their importance; they stand, they shade, they remember.
In the Caribbean lowlands where I grew up, trees have always been more than background scenery. They are milestones of memory: the tamarind tree in the corner of a yard where elders gather to tell stories, the abarco whose name became a whispered promise of strength, the lone mango tree that feeds more than just hunger in a dusty village square.
But today, we rush past them. In cities expanding without pause, trees become obstacles — something to trim, to relocate, to remove because they “interfere” with a new road or housing block. We measure their worth in board feet or real estate potential, not in roots that hold the soil or leaves that cool the air when the sun feels angry.
I have walked forests where logging scars still bleed sap long after the chainsaws leave. I have traced the rings of a fallen trunk, each one telling of droughts survived, floods endured, and seasons that came and went while governments changed but the tree remained. Trees do not debate sustainability; they practice it, quietly, one leaf at a time.
This column is my small protest against forgetting. Against the habit of seeing a tree as replaceable or expendable, a mere statistic in reforestation reports that rarely replace what was lost in the same soil. A sapling is hope, yes — but an old tree is history, biology, and resilience woven together in wood and chlorophyll.
During fieldwork, I once asked a local farmer why he refused to cut down a massive old oak shading his crops. He smiled, as if the answer were obvious: “If I cut it, where will the birds rest? Who will remind my grandchildren where this house started?” Science may count carbon credits; he counts memories.
We talk a lot about climate change, about emissions, about big solutions discussed in summits far away. Meanwhile, a single mature tree in a yard can lower temperatures, shelter pollinators, feed soil fungi that keep nearby crops healthy. And it does this for free, asking nothing but to be left standing.
When communities lose trees, they lose more than shade. They lose stories, gathering places, the calm that comes when wind rustles through leaves after a punishing day. In my region, grandmothers still tell children not to whistle at night under certain trees, believing spirits sleep there. Whether myth or lesson, it teaches respect: not everything green and rooted belongs to us to take.
If you’re reading this, I invite you to do a small thing today: look at a tree near you not as decoration but as a neighbor. Notice its bark, its scars, its patience in standing through storms you ran from behind locked doors. Ask an elder in your family which tree was important in their childhood. You might be surprised to learn how deep our roots really go when we allow memory to bloom.
Some say planting trees fixes everything. I don’t believe that alone. Planting is a start, but protecting the ones that have grown with us is an act of maturity. Young trees are the promise; old ones are the proof that promises can survive if we respect the cycles of life.
Planeta Resiliente exists because there are lessons whispered in forests and backyards alike that textbooks overlook. I write this column so that somewhere, someone remembers that true resilience is slow, patient, and firmly rooted — not just in policies, but in places we can touch, lean against, and learn from.
One day, I hope to see children sitting under an old tree, reading about how their parents saved it instead of paving it over. I hope they learn from its rings that survival is not luck but choice, repeated season after season.
When we measure a nation’s wealth, we count minerals, oil reserves, agricultural exports. Rarely do we count the shade of a tamarind at midday or the oxygen given freely by an ancient ceiba. Maybe if we did, we would stand to lose less and cherish more.
May this column remind you — and me — that resilience is not invented. It is taught, year after year, by silent teachers rooted in the earth, reminding us with each falling leaf that life insists, even when we forget to notice.