The Lost Hickory Tree, Global Heating, Time, and What’s to Come
by Dell deChant
We lost the massive Swamp Hickory at our community garden when Hurricane Milton swept through New Port Richey. Well over 100 years old and at least 50 feet tall, the majestic tree had lived here longer than human frames of age and life can grasp. Swamp Hickories were once fairly common in these parts. Today they are hard to find. Prized for furniture and flooring, Swamp Hickories have the shortest lifespan of any of the hickories, but they still routinely live 150 years and can live up to 200 years, with one source reporting 300 years. Our friend was surely at the upper end of the lifespan range. The loss was sad, tragic, yet natural and fated in a Homeric sort of way. That tree was surely older than any human being alive – now or ever. I am saddened by the passing of this friend.
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A human friend reflecting on the catastrophic impact of Milton and the loss of the giant hickory, shared the oft-heard observation in these aftermaths that things will get worse. They will, and they have. They have been getting worse for the last 50 years or so; escalating now, over the past ten years, and accelerating year by year. Yes. Things (climate “things”) will get worse.
How much worse depends on the time frame we use; and the time frame we are familiar with cannot envision the scale and scope of the worst cases – but most folks living today will experience far worse catastrophes than Milton or Helene or any other hurricane we have seen. And the worsening will continue long into the future, further into the future than the lifespan of any human being and worsening still into the future lives of today’s children and their children, and the even longer lives of hickory trees.
I’ve been teaching about global heating and the ecological crisis for over 20 years and been aware of it for more than 50. Ecological collapse has been in university curricula for decades, with degree programs in environmental studies proliferating in schools around the country over the past twenty years. Silent Spring was published in 1962, and “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis” appeared in the journal Science in 1967. I read both in my teens, and wondered then (as I still do), why more was not being done to respond to the crisis.
As Thomas Friedman wrote in 2010 (quoting Rob Watson): “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats a thousand.” More fully, Friedman observes:
We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be benign — even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will not be so. Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,” says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing. (New York Times, 2010)
Remember James Hansen’s report to Congress in 1988? It was font-page news almost 40 years ago, with the New York Times headline of June 24, 1988 blaring: “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate.” The opening paragraph of the Times lead article reads like a report from any year since:
The earth has been warmer in the first five months of this year than in any comparable period since measurements began 130 years ago, and the higher temperatures can now be attributed to a long-expected global warming trend linked to pollution, a space agency scientist reported today. (New York Times, 1988)
For 40 years, this could be reprinted every spring. Same with Hansen’s testimony to Congress, which includes these three observations:
Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is already large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is large enough to begin to affect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves. … It is changing our climate now. (Slate)
I remember my father, when I was boy, telling me that the barrier islands in Pinellas County should never be developed (“built on,” his words). “A big hurricane will wash everything here away.” He said that often during our walks along the Gulf shore near our beach house on Treasure Island in the 1950s when we chased fiddler crabs back to their burrows and watched shore birds resting on nests and caring for their chicks. Thinking of everything being washed away made me sad because I did not want the animals to lose their home or us to lose the beach house. “The beach house, too?” I asked. “Everything.” The beach house was a cypress log cabin with hickory floors – probably Swamp Hickory, which was once fairly common in these parts. The house of cypress logs with hickory floors is long gone, washed away not by a hurricane but by the tidal surge of development along Florida’s Gulf Coast – replaced by high-rise condos.
Well, Milton did not wash every thing away – but Milton was just a taste of what’s to come. And we all know it. We also know how to avoid the worst that is yet to come. We know, but we seem unable to act. So, I still wonder (as I did in my teens), why more is not being done. It is not too late, but time is getting shorter. We know what to do: cut carbon pumping, pause development, reject industrial agriculture, stop globalization; localize life, reduce consumption, repair and reuse, talk to neighbors, start a vegetable garden, plant trees (try hickories), work with others, vote for environmentalists, slow down. We could have started doing all of this in the 1980s; and actually100 years earlier, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, in the 1880s, when the barrier islands were home to shore birds and fiddler crabs, Milton was more famous as a poet, and the now-lost Hickory tree was a just a sapling. It is not too late now.
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Sources and Resources
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.155.3767.1203
https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/james-hansens-1988-climate-change-warning-30-years-on.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25friedman.html
https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FR329
https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/st121
https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/carya-glabra
https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/misc/ag_654/volume_2/carya/glabra.htm
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1988/06/24/350088.html?pageNumber=1
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html
A Tree With Many Names
Swamp Hickory’s Binomial (Latin) name is Carya glabra, but it does by many other names, including red hickory, pignut hickory, pignut, sweet pignut, small fruited hickory, coast pignut hickory, smoothbark hickory, switch hickory, and broom hickory.
Another Hurricane Story From Ecology Florida News
For another hurricane story from our archives, see Ecology Florida News “What Irma Taught Us”
About the Author
Dell deChant is Instructor Emeritus in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, where he served as Chair, Associate Chair, Program Director, and founder of the USF Urban Food Sovereignty Group. He began his career at USF in 1986. The author of three books, over 40 articles in professional publications, and chapters in fourteen books, deChant’s specialization is religion and contemporary cultures. His continues research on religious, literary, and ecological expressions of Agrarianism as they manifest in American popular culture.
deChant is Chair of the Environmental Committee of the City of New Port Richey, Chair and founding member of the Pasco County Food Policy Council, and member of steering committee of New Port Richey FarmNet.