In The Book of Hope, Jane Goodall and Doug Abrams discuss the resilience of nature. The book is filled with stories that Jane has told Doug. She is a natural storyteller and believes that people are far more moved by stories than statistics. One of the stories reported is of Jane’s visit to Nagasaki, Japan, where the second atomic bomb was dropped at the end of World War Two. The fireball produced by that explosion reached temperatures equivalent to the surface of the sun. Scientists predicted that the soil had been sterilized and that nothing would grow for decades. Amazingly, however, two 500-year-old camphor trees survived that blast. Jane told a moving story of her visit to one of those trees in 1990:

“It’s now a large tree but its thick trunk has cracks and fissures, and you can see it’s all black inside. But every spring that tree puts out new leaves. Many Japanese regard it as a holy monument to pace and survival; and prayers, written in tiny kanji characters on parchment, had been hung from the branches in memory of all those who died. I stood there, humbled by the devastation we humans can cause and the unbelievable resilience of nature.” (Book of Hope, p. 70)

In the summer of 2018, Susan and I were able to visit Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bomb blast in 1945. The heat emitted by the explosion in Hiroshima within the first three seconds was 40 times greater than the sun. The rebuilt city that we visited stands as a monument to peace, but also to the incredible destructive capabilities of humans. The devastation that followed the blast is impossible to imagine, even though we walked around the charred remains of partially-destroyed buildings, looked at pictures and read stories in the museum, and viewed memorials made from some of the melted and charred debris left after the blast.

One of the things that was striking about Hiroshima were the trees. We were deeply grateful for all of the greenery in the city as we walked around on a hot summer day. After the blast, trees from around the world were donated to help with the city’s restoration. Among all of the trees of Hiroshima are more than 150 that had been there prior to the bombing. The trees are called Hibakujumoku in Japanese - survivor trees in English. One grows at the site of the Hiroshima Castle. The tree survived while the castle was destroyed.

It is good to be reminded of hibakujumoku these days. I have had a number of conversations recently with people about a sense of despair that can come from all of the signs of human damage to the environment. Human-caused global climate change has resulted in dramatic changes in the weather and intense natural disasters. A short distance from where we live, in southern British Columbia are entire towns that were destroyed by wildfire last summer. At least one of those locations was inundated by flooding earlier this winter. Evidence of wildfires, flooding and mudslides is easy to find. There are many people working to bring about changes in human behavior including the decreasing of our use of fossil fuels, the redesign of buildings to decrease their carbon footprint, and other green initiatives in society. But there can also be a sense of “too little too late” when it comes to our capacity to change. I’ve participated in conversations with people who seem to be nearly defeated by all of the negative news about the destruction that humans have caused.

I have lived with the knowledge of the amazing destructive power of humans all of my life. I was born less than a decade after the blasts that brought such destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My father was a pilot instructor during World War Two. He has entries in his logbooks as pilot of a B-29, the type of airplane that delivered the bombs. But I also have lived through signs of the resilience of nature. I have walked on the streets of Hiroshima and witnessed the restored city with its beautiful trees and peaceful monuments. I stood in the park near the epicenter of the blast and rang the peace bell as I dedicated my life to seeking alternatives to such violence and destruction. And, like Jane Goodall, I have a few stories to tell about the amazing resilience of the natural world.

I grew up in Montana, not far from Yellowstone National Park. In those days, Elk were the dominant species in the Park. They had so overpopulated that the herds had eaten all of the willows growing along the banks of the rivers. Winters saw elk perish from starvation. In those days, we never saw eagles at all. Then, in 1988 and 1989, wildfires swept over the park. Near West Yellowstone there is a slope where the fire burned so hot that the soil was said to be sterilized and no plants were able to survive. But they did. That hillside was green two years after the fires. New life came back in Yellowstone in unexpected ways with amazing swiftness. These days the elk herds are back in check and the population is kept in balance by wolves. Willows and beavers have returned to the streams.

These days I see eagles on every visit to Yellowstone country and I see them on my daily walks in the neighborhood where I now live. The restoration of eagles and other raptors is due to changes in the use of pesticides and also to the amazing work of raptor rehabilitation centers. We were able to visit the Birds of Prey Center when we lived in Idaho and learn of the work of those who have devoted their lives to studying these amazing birds and discovered ways of captive breeding that have brought them back from the brink of extinction.

Every time I see an eagle splitting the sky with its wings, I am reminded of the power of nature to recover from damage and destruction. Each eagle is, for me, a sign of hope. And, like Jane Goodall, we are called to tell the stories of hope so that we do not fall into despair for there is much work that remains.