Lessons from a walk in the park — adapting in an uncertain environment
I went for my (increasingly must not miss!) walk in the park this morning to see what I would learn.
The park looked no different which was a slight disappointment. I found myself turning right rather than continuing to walk down the hill.
As I looked left down the hill, this oak caught my eye.
As I admired the symmetry I noticed that what appeared like one oak was actually several oaks standing together.
This made me curious as I am reading Wilding about how a farm in Sussex was part of a rewilding experiment. This talks about the ‘closed canopy’ theory which is accepted wisdom that this country was once one continuous forest.
Oaks are discussed and how they have such a broad canopy that no acorns that fall underneath would ever grow.
This was interesting as there were actually four oaks that had somehow surivived very amicably alongside each other. It made me smile as I though of the oaks being very ‘english’ and politely offering up space to each other.
As you can see from this photo, the oak has an almost flat plane where no branches are projecting towards me, thereby allowing space for the other oak. In turn the other oak is not projecting branches to intrude on its space.
What does this tell us about oaks?
There were a couple of things that came up for me.
We are always atempting to understand and describe behaviour of nature but we miss the point. We have a need to control but there is no need and our attempts at understanding with its categorisation and observation will always fall short.
In part this is because we are not allowing for context.
In this context, the oak wasn’t planted alone. The oaks didn’t behave as they should. Was one oak ‘supposed’ to dominate so the others would perish?
When was the ‘decision’ made to grow branches that didn’t overlap? Was it one decision or was it a series of small experiments to work out what was the best strategy?
Where did the information come from that drove that decision?
Was the mycelium network passing information about the oaks proximity? Were the trees passing chemical signals from their leaves as they grew?
It’s actually quite mindblowing as I think about this and write it down.
What’s the lesson for me?
There are several lessons I suspect as I start to integrate this quite rich natural story.
The big insight that emerged as I walked was that we must allow for context.
I was thinking about a conversation last week when a community leader that I work with talked about the frustration about advice from many different people. There is a need to respect and consider all those inputs which takes time. We all want to help and feel useful but also there may be a need to feel good, intelligent etc. Context is very nuanced and complex when you consider the people involved in a situation, their life history and beliefs (which are usually hidden).
Without all that being surfaced, the advice can be worse than useless.
Also, I think this is what adaptation can look like. Having a vision but avoiding being attached to how it will happen. This may have worked this one way successfully thousands of times before. But also there is the arrogance of assuming you understand and refusing to let go when this is what is needed. This may well be driven by fear. What if the knowledge of what worked before feels like it defines you as an individual. That can be pretty scary.
And you?
Is this teaching you anything? Please share what’s coming up.
