Once upon a time, a birch tree stood sentry in front of my home. It started small, as all trees do, but by the year 2021 it stood at least ten meters tall. It had papery bark that peeled easily and knots in its trunk that told stories of its past.
Everyday, the birch provided gifts to us, the residents of the house that sat behind it. In the spring, it hosted chattering birds who added music to our days and gave us a reason to stare idly out the window. In the summer, it cast shade on our home, providing valuable cooling. In the fall, it dropped its leaves onto the ground below. We raked the leaves and added them to our garden as mulch. In the winter, it provided a cozy location for tea with a friend. Chairs were set out in the snow under its bare canopy, next to its thick trunk – the perfect location for a good conversation.
Until one day, climate change started to disrupt the way that the birch gave to us throughout the seasons. Over the next twenty five years, everything changed for this tree.
Because of climate change, far fewer birds visited us in the spring. For some, their migration patterns were disrupted. Sadly, some bird species didn’t survive at all. Their young hatched too early in the spring, when plentiful food wasn’t yet available.
Because of climate change, the tree stopped providing enough cooling for our home in the summer. We became uncomfortable in the intensifying heat and had to find other means of cooling our home.
Because of climate change, the tree grew less leaves, as it was stressed by changing conditions. We lost some of the precious mulch that we used to spread over the garden in the fall, which helped our vegetables grow robust the following summer.
Because of climate change, we set chairs out for wintertime tea in sloppy mud, rather than crunchy snow. The tree dripped water on us, melting when – in the past – it would have stood frozen for months on end.
Until finally, the tree could no longer survive. It was not able to satisfy its thirst for water. It did not have the stability it needed – season after season – to know when its leaves should bud, grow, and drop. It did not know when to store energy and when to spend it on new growth. It missed the snowy winter and the chattering birds. It slowly began to die off from the inside, and then suddenly limbs ten meters off the ground were succumbing to stress and falling dramatically to the ground.
And everyday after that, for a long time, the climate continued to change. Where the tree used to stand, new life began to grow. Grasses and shrubs overtook the area. Changing landscapes were something that we, as humans, had to get used to. Trees died off and new species – sometimes other trees, or grasses, or bushes – took their place.
*** This post was structured based on the idea of the story spine, which helps stories take shape with a set of prompts. The prompts I used were based on those in Cunningham’s (2017) work. The story spine idea was originally developed by Kenn Adams in How to Improvise a Full-Length Play: The Art of Spontaneous Theater and popularized by Emma Coats, who worked for Pixar, in a series of tweets (Cunningham, 2017).
Beyond its use in helping a storyteller develop the structure of their story, Rotman (2017) showed that the story spine can be used in a workshop setting with people from different disciplines to “foster empathy, engagement, creativity, and reflection” (p. 304). Rotman also noted that, in these settings, storytelling using the story spine can act as a “social lubricant” (p. 308). Thinking in this context, the above post could be used in a workshop setting – for example, with different stakeholders in my community – to convey my feelings and thoughts about climate change in the local context. I wonder what other personal climate stories I could tell by using the story spine?
References
Cunningham Bigler, K. (March 1, 2017). Jumpstart your story with the story spine. Curiographic. https://www.curiographic.com/blog/2017/2/18/jumpstart-your-story-with-the-story-spine
Rotman, S. (2017). “Once upon a time…” Eliciting energy and behaviour change stories using a fairy tale story spine. Energy Research & Social Science, 31, 303-310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.06.033
Hanna, I love that you used the story spine to describe a tree in your sit spot. The story drew me in. It actually reminded me of a better version of Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree”. Do you remember that story? The tree gave and gave and gave gifts to the little boy, until the boy had taken everything from the tree and in the end it was just a stump. You’ve turned this on it’s head a little bit and made it more of a reciprocal and respectful relationship with the tree, despite the similarly sad ending. Thanks for reminding me of that childhood story, making it better, and teaching us all about climate change in the process.
The Giving Tree was my FAVOURITE book as a child. It was one of only 3-4 books on my grandparent’s shelf when I came to visit and it was my fave. That and the Nome from Gnome. I agree that Hanna’s rendition of the birch tree story is familiar in being told almost from the perspective of the tree.
Thanks, Amy. I hadn’t heard of this story before – I’ll have to look it up!
Thanks for this Hanna. It’s really cool to see the story spine put into action; the repetition is really beautiful (in a mournful kind of way). Using it in a workshop setting with stakeholders is a great idea; you could fill it in where you want to direct inquiry and imagination but also just leave it open for play. And honestly, if you can get adults to play, you are half way there!
One thing that comes to mind is that I wonder how the story would change if you used different pronouns, as Kimmerer suggests? How would the feeling change in the piece?
My inspiration! I really enjoyed how you used the story spine for your birch tree story about climate change. To add to what Shandell was suggesting around pronouns, I wonder about telling the story from the first-person perspective of the tree and how that might shift the feeling?