Poplar trees in fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I just finished reading Ben Rawlence’s 2022 book The Treeline. It is a book that made me think. It made me cry. It made me despair. It also gave me hope.
Cattails line a snow-covered marsh with spruce and fir behind, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I was gripped by this honest and unflinching exploration on the moving treeline with climate change and what it will mean for humanity. Beautifully written and rigorously reported, Rawlence invited me on a journey of all major treelines over the globe from Scotland, Norway and Russia, to Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Throughout his description of a warming world and a vanishing way of life, Rawlence meditates on the many repercussions on how humans live.
Pine-cedar forest in Ontario (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
He aptly describes the forests of the world as the ‘heartbeat of the planet,’ the cycles of breathing and the pulses of life from the spike of oxygen in the spring when trees put out their leaves to the peaks and troughs over day and night that regulate plant photosynthesis and respiration. The peaks and troughs are getting shallower, he writes. With more carbon dioxide in the air the trees work less; they inhale less and exhale less oxygen.
“The planet is a finely tuned system. A few degrees of change in its orbit can usher in an ice age; a few degrees of temperature change can transform the distribution of species, can melt glaciers and create oceans. In the future, when the ice is gone, there may be no such thing as a treeline at all. As the stable currents of air and water associated with the Gulf Stream, the polar front, polar vortex and Beaufort Gyre dissipate or fluctuate, the Arctic Ocean melts completely, and the Rossby waves in the upper atmosphere go haywire, the fine gradations of temperature, altitude and latitude first observed by Alexander von Humboldt will become decoupled and ecological transition zones scrambled. Instead of a majestic sweeping zone of forest around the planet, we might find discontinuous pockets of trees in odd places, refugees from soil and temperatures long gone, and crocodiles once again at the North Pole.”
Ben Rawlence, The Treeline
Snow-covered river shoreline with mixed forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Rawlence brings this all into perspective to our present situation and the role science has played in our hubristic illusion of control:
“An unfortunate side effect of science is the illusion of human mastery: the idea that if we know what is happening then we can control. The irony is that we might have been able to. The tragedy is that it is too late. The chain reaction is under way. The curve only gets steeper from here…five metres of sea level rise is locked in; it’s just a question of how fast the ice melts. Once again, the models seem to underestimate the speed…”
Ben Rawlence, The Treeline
Willow by a river at first snow, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
What is most unfortunate for us, for humanity, is that we have known all this for some time. But we’ve done little. “Industrialist capitalism and its export colonialism” with its exploitive gaze that drives our needs and wants and actions has chosen to ignore the signs. That exploitive gaze ignored that we are not only embedded in but dependent upon the natural world and all the forests to live and flourish.
Tamarack and birch trees in the fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
What Rawlence does acknowledge is a way out of our self-created doom and accompanying solastalgia:
“Our present emergency is forcing us to remember what, until recently, we have always known: that there is a web of communication, meaning and significance beyond us, a world of life forms constantly chattering, shouting and flirting and hunting each other, indifferent to human affairs. And there is solace in such a vision. The way out of the depression and grief and guilt of the carbon cul-de-sac we have driven down is to contemplate the world without us. To know the earth, that life, will continue its evolutionary journey in all its mystery and wonder. To widen our idea of time, and of ourselves. If we see ourselves as part of a larger whole, then it is the complete picture that is beautiful, worthy of meaning and respect, worth perhaps dying for, safe in the knowledge that life is not the opposite of death but a circle, as the forest teaches us, a continuum.”
Ben Rawlence, The Treeline
Poplar trees line a road in the Ontario country (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
The planet will be alright. Species will go and others will come. Earth has experienced five extinction events (we are currently experiencing the sixth extinction event now) and after each, life flourished again, albeit different life.
Is there still hope for humanity? Perhaps—if we set our hubris aside and embrace humility and kindness. And, if in that humility, we can adapt our way through the succession we’ve triggered. There might be hope for us still…
Rawlence devotes his epilogue called “Thinking Like a Forest” to the wisdom of the indigenous people who have for millennia co-existed sustainably with the natural ecosystems of the Earth. “The Koyukon, the Sámi, the Nganasan, the Anishinaabe are just a few of the countless indigenous peoples whose world view attests to our foundational reliance on the forest.”
Time to learn from them.
Trees at sunset in winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of award-nominated speculative novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s recent book is the bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” (Mincione Edizioni, Rome). Her latest “Water Is…” is currently an Amazon Bestseller and NY Times ‘year in reading’ choice of Margaret Atwood.
“As Nature tames a lake over time, one thing replaces another. As it undergoes a natural succession from oligotrophic to highly productive eutrophic, a lake’s beauty mellows and it surrenders to the complexities of destiny. Minimalism yields to a baroque richness that, in turn, heralds extinction. The lake shrinks to a swamp then buries itself under a meadow.”
Lynna Dresden
’A Diary’ is a brilliant story…Munteanu writes with fresh, stimulating style.”
CRAIG H. BOWLSBY, author of The Knights of Winter
Outlet of Thompson Creek at sunset, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
“[My] paper on stream periphyton in Hydrobiologia could have been controversial and ultimately rejected by the scientific community; instead, it demurred to traditional science and was embraced as ground-breaking.”
Lynna Dresden
A Diary in the Age of Water is“A chilling but believable portrayal of what might happen as fresh water becomes more scarce.”
MIRAMICHI READER
“Evoking Ursula LeGuin’s unflinching humane and moral authority, Nina Munteanu takes us into the lives of four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. In a diary that entwines acute scientific observation with poignant personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Particularly harrowing are the neighbourhood water betrayals, along with Lynna’s deliberately dehydrated appearance meant to deflect attention from her own clandestine water collection. Her estrangement from her beloved daughter, her “dark cascade” who embarks upon a deadly path of her own, is heart-wrenching. Munteanu elegantly transports us between Lynna’s exuberant youth and her tormented present, between microcosm and macrocosm, linking her story and struggles-and those of her mother, daughter, and granddaughter-to the life force manifest in water itself. In language both gritty and hauntingly poetic, Munteanu delivers an uncompromising warning of our future.”
LYNN HUTCHINSON LEE, multimedia artist, author, and playwright
Snow melt in marsh by country road, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
“During spring thaw or fall turnover, the thermocline erodes and the changing temperature forces a lake to mix, revealing her secrets.”
Lynna Dresden
“Munteanu’s experience in bridging the worlds of biology and writing makes A Diary in the Age of Water unique in being strong and focused from both the scientific and literary perspectives.”
STRANGE HORIZONS
Overflowing marshy creek in Trent Nature Sanctuary in spring, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Ice sheet with embedded pancake ice breaking into fragments on the Otonabee River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
It’s spring and every day on the river is different. One day the ice thaws. The next day it reforms only to thaw again.
Ice sheet stitched together by ice pancakes and fragments, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
I love watching the process of ice pancake formation and reformation on the Otonabee River. It starts with primordial ice-froth, which then coagulates into ice sheets. These sometimes look like fabric or white felt.
Giant ice fragments with embedded pancake ice break off ice sheets in spring on the river, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Then entire sheets break up into long fragments like giant pieces of glass shards, all floating down the river, little opaque pancakes embedded in clear glassy sheets. And the water beneath is the darkest blue.
Ice pancakes glued into an ice sheet by clear ice formed around them (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Ice sculptures form as wave-induced ice shuga collide and form strange shapes, Otonabee River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Heavy snowfall where I live in Ontario (photo by Nina Munteanu)
I currently live in Ontario, Canada, where the four seasons are still distinct and winter comes with signature cold temperature well below zero degrees Centigrade along with lots and lots of snow. I grew up in Quebec, where the snow often piled up higher than I stood tall. Temperatures often went into the minus zero teens and twenties with wind chills reaching minus thirty degrees. This called for the right equipment. Insulated coat or jacket, snow pants, wool toque and mittens and/or gloves that are also well insulated. And, of course, warm snow boots.
Nina on a walk during a snowstorm, ON (photo by Merridy Cox)
Country road in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina’s car on ‘walkabout’ through Kawartha country after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Farm in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Cows on a farm in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Country field in Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
School kids heading to class after a fresh snow, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
The Rotary Trail after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Heavy snow falls on a trail in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Since moving to the West Coast then back east to Ontario, I’ve come to realize that I love winters. I love how snow covers everything, how it quiets the landscape and changes it in subtle ways. I love the frigid wind, how it bites the face with invigorating energy, reminding me that I am so alive. I love the sounds of winter, of walking on snow, crunching and squeaking, of the howl of the wind and the creaking and groaning of the trees, or the cracking and booming of the ice forming and reforming on the river.
Bridge over creek in Trent Nature Sanctuary during heavy snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Jackson Creek after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Woman and her dog walk through cedar swamp forest after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Riparian forest clothed in fresh snow, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Riparian forest after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I am currently finishing my fiction book Thalweg, which takes place throughout Canada, but predominantly in northern British Columbia and the arctic of the Northwest Territories. My main character, a Gwich’in scientist, explores the land during a time of climate change, and much of it involves the expansive vast snowfields of northern Canada in which she describes the look, smell, feel, and sounds of snow. She thinks with great fondness of home in the Arctic where snow prominently features and, bringing in all her senses, of course, includes sound:
There are many different kinds of snow, and any native of the north can recognize them. We can not only tell something of the quality of weather from it, but also its history. Without having experienced the day or history of the place, we will know simply from walking through it. For instance, on a minus twenty-degree Centigrade day, when the cold bites your face and your breath coils out of your mouth like steam, old snow shines under a raking sun like an ice sheet. As though clear plastic was stretched over it. Sometimes, a hoar frost will form on the glassy thin layer, adding more glitter. Walking through it creates a symphony of crunch, pop and skittle sounds as each step breaks through the thin brittle layer into soft snow underneath. The scattering flat shards tingle like glass across the glistening ice-snow sheet.
Fresh snow that has fallen on a frigid night of minus fifteen degrees in a drier climate is fluffy, individual snowflakes glinting like jewels in the sun, and emits a high-pitched squeak and crunch as your boots press down on it. The colder the temperature, the higher the squeak. I just made that up. I’m not sure if it’s true. But considering the relationship of harmonics with temperature, it’s plausible.
Squeaky snow is the snow of my home up north, where it arrives in a thick passion in October with the winter darkness, and where a constant minus 16°C to minus 30°C pervades until spring, six months later. The snow resembles powdered sugar, glittering like millions of tiny mica flakes under the moonlight of an arctic winter night. It covers everything, the ground, the trees and tiniest vegetation with a white blanket of snow. And when the wind teases the trees, they rain glitter-dust. In places where the north wind freely drifts across open landscape, sastrugi form; frozen wavelets, mini-barchans and dune chains that resemble the wave ripples of a sandy white beach. In some vast open areas, the wind will sculpt a frozen sea of irregular ridges and grooves up to a metre high. Mary’s friend Jem from Igloolik calls these snowdrifts qimugruk, whose distinctive shapes become permanent features of the snowscape, with tips always pointing west-northwest. Igloolik hunters use these uqalurait to set their bearings when travelling across the expansive tundra, particularly during poor visibility from storms or darkness.
Tracks through a small path by the river, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Snow drift on a trail by the river, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
One of the sensitivity readers for Thalweg, anthropologist and Gwich’in scholar Ingrid Kritsch, related to me an interesting account during attempts to open up to oil and gas development the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge–a critical area where the Porcupine Caribou herd calve. “To many Americans, it was just a big, white, barren expanse of unused lands,” said Ingrid. She recalled a Senator speaking for development on these lands. The Senator held up a blank sheet of white paper and claimed “this is what the area looks like!”
The vast snowfields look nothing like that…
Snow drifts in Ontario (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
…Now, don’t forget to play in the snow…
Author’s son and friends play in fresh snow on Christmas in BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu reads a book with her cup of tea in +8 degree C, ON (photo by Merridy Cox)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Snow covered farmer’s field at sunset, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Ice clad prisms, snow covered fields of glittering fire… Winter days, the wondrous glow: ultramarine lights and turning shades The magic song: ice and gently underflow of meandering streams Singing waters on the tortuous pathway below… Clangor, bell sounds: the moving harmonies on icy slopes…
Jackson Creek in winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Ice ‘islands’ touched by sunset light in Jackson Creek, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Ice block in Jackson Creek, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Farmer’s field in Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
A bronze feathered hawk sails high above Into the bright sunlit skies, Hawk, swiftly carried in its flight above bended fir and aspen forests, A wild, fierce, freewheeling majesty…
Icy bay and shed in the trees, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Small cabin in a meadow, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Trees by fence in farmer’s field, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Snow from a cedar tree showers down glitter-dust in a light breeze in Jackson Creek Park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
The many pristine snow reflected lights, glittering fires Above a snow clad world in a time of darkness: Nature’s magic universe everywhere extant: We are overwhelmed, confounded by the wonder of it all.
Skier checks his path on a slope at sunset, BC (photo by Lindsay)
Snow glistening in the sunset on a very cold day, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Reflections in Thompson Creek outlet after a new snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Otonabee River glittering in the sun, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Bev Gorbet is a Toronto poet. She has published several poems with the Retired Teachers Organization and most recently in “Literary Connection IV: Then and Now” (In Our Words Inc., 2019), edited by Cheryl Antao Xavier.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
“Mankind will continue to flounder when he underestimates Nature and sees himself separate from Her. Man is having his way with Her now. But eventually She will have her way with him. When they try to hang onto water, it will slip through their fingers. That’s what water does.”
Una Dresden
“In poetic prose with sober factual basis, Munteanu transmutes a harrowing dystopia into a transcendentalist origin myth. An original cautionary tale that combines a family drama with an environmental treatise.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS
Jackson Creek in early winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Rotary Trail in Peterborough during a foggy day, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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A few days ago, I woke up in the morning to a dense fog outside. I hastily dressed, grabbed a clementine, put on my boots and coat and raced outside into the gentle morning. The air was fresh. A calm stillness had settled over everything, from ghostly forest to dripping branches by the path to people who appeared and disappeared in the mist.
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Rotary Trail path to the bridge across the Otonabee River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
As I strolled along the trail and forest paths, camera in hand, I realized that I needn’t have rushed; the fog didn’t burn away and dissipate beneath a strong sun. It remained foggy the entire day.
Path through winter forest on a foggy morning, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Thompson Creek marsh in the fog, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Otonabee marsh in the fog, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Dogwood shrubs add colour to the marsh as ice forms, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
At Thompson Creek marsh, crimson dogwood shrubs and gnarly trees greeted me with arms stretched through the fog. The damp air, fragrant with the stirring of Winter, caressed my cheeks. I felt like I’d entered a Camille Pissarro painting…
Alders, willows and other trees, amid ruddy dogwoods, line Thompson Creek marsh behind, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Road to Lakefield along Otonabee River in the fog, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
During my drive along the river, the calm stillness of the day settled over me with muted beauty. Nature’s shapes peered through the mist like quantum entangled apparitions, coalescing to the nearness of my gaze then vanishing again on my parting.
Shore of ice-strewn Otonabee River off Lakefield Road, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
1906 building on shore of Otonabee River during a foggy day, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Small island in Otonabee River on road to Lakefield, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I drove along country roads that vanished in the mist. As I plied through the fog, phantom trees loomed, quietly announcing themselves on the side of the road as their shapes assembled into something solid.
I imagined I was catching the breath of heaven…
Country dirt road in the Kawarthas on a foggy day, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Tree ghosts in a farmer’s field in Kawartha country, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Snow melt stream and marsh on the side of a country road on a foggy day, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
The fog is a shape-shifter. Sometimes a brooding beast, obscuring all in its indiscriminate path. Other times an impish rogue, a pale coquette, winking and teasing as it both reveals and hides, like a good mystery novel…
Fog over the Otonabee River, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Thompson Creek marsh in a winter mist, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
