Kumejima’s Vulnerability

Humans existed on Kumejima since pre-history.  Trade for 700 years.  Pine nematode is decimating the Ryukyu Pine population, no way to stop it.  What has evolved over centuries is being destroyed in years.  Color of Kumejima changes.  Ecology suffers.

No forestry or tree professionals on the island.  insufficient funding, skills and knowledge to deal with the epidemic.

Nationally designated natural monument ‘Kume Goeda-no-matsu’ now dead.  A stunning tree that has stood for approximately 300 years.  The shape begets humility, its thick long horizontal branches  use the floor as props to allow ascension.  Propped by the land and also human hand.  A stunning tree in life and death.  Pine nematode will reemerge, how to control it?  Thousands of trees already infected, dead standing.  The nematode and its host are free to roam the island, brought in on infected pallets.  The story of humans never changes.  The vulnerable suffer by the ignorance of others.

Island life is difficult to comprehend and to be honest I was never so interested in these places.  I like noise and action, not stillness.  Kumejima feels vulnerable in its quiet entirety, the powerful ocean seemingly wants to swallow it up.  Not that it has done, or will.  But for an English man with thalassophobia the sensation seems real enough.  Vulnerability.  Unable to comprehend the intellect of humans, and no place to move, the Ryukyu Pines are vulnerable.  The island is an ecosystem filled with modern people who seemingly want to shop on their smart phones rather than sit under a tree on a starry night. Dis-attachment from nature is a disease, another kind of epidemic.

We stood next to it, saying our prayers of thanks, compassion and sadness, while ignorant tourists snapped photos of its demise, not even understanding that the ‘brown’ needles meant something.  The vulnerable suffer by the ignorance of others.  After years of in-action, this historic monument is scheduled to be culled by chainsaw.  Centuries of living tissue, instructed by its God and natural forces into miraculous shapes, will be culled.  Culled in death.  The dis-attachment from nature and the screaming beauty of the Goeda-no-matsu are incompatible.  Where are the islands ancestors voices, why cant they be heard?

The word must be spread to protect this tree in death.  To allow it the dignity to return to the soil from which it was raised.

A call to arms for all those that have a heart.

Spread the word.