The Unspoken Grief, Mourning Trees in an Age of Ecological Amnesia

The Unspoken Grief, Mourning Trees in an Age of Ecological Amnesia

In the quiet, unrecorded corners of our world, a new and often silenced form of grief is taking root. It is the grief for a felled tree, a bulldozed forest, a river run dry. It is a sorrow that defies the established genres of mourning, a feeling that our emotional vocabulary, so carefully curated for human-to-human loss, fails to articulate. The poignant image of Deola Bai from a village in Chhattisgarh’s Naitagarh district, hugging the stump of a tree cut down “for profit” and weeping, is not an anomaly. It is a powerful, unscripted elegy for a world we are rapidly losing, a testament to a bond that industrial progress dismisses as sentimental indulgence.

The central question posed by writer Sumana Roy resonates deeply in this context: “How do we console the killed, those forced out of life?” When death is untimely, unnatural, and violent—the result of an axe, a chainsaw, a developer’s blueprint—it renders the familiar foreign. We possess a rich tapestry of rituals for human loss: the holding of hands, the solemn prayers, the shared meals, the designated periods of mourning. But what are the rituals for the loss of an ancient banyan tree? What is the appropriate condolence for a forest cleared for a highway? Our emotional conditioning, as Roy observes, allows us to memorialize our own species, but “similar feelings for other species seem like an indulgence, an unnecessary eighth note.”

This article explores the emerging, urgent phenomenon of ecological grief, the cultural and scientific foundations of our connection to flora, and the imperative to expand our circle of compassion to include the silent, stationary lives that sustain our own.

The Grammar of Grief: When “Only a Tree” Is Not Enough

The phrase “It’s only a tree…” is a familiar one. It is the default response from a society conditioned to see plants as inanimate resources, as backdrop, as property. Roy recounts her own experiences, from witnessing “thousands of trees felled for the Siliguri SAARC highway” to the personal tragedy of a houseplant that would “never respond to air, water and light again.” Her reaction—breaking down into tears—was met with a reaffirmation of this human-centric hierarchy of life, a “proof of being a human being” that necessarily excludes deep sorrow for non-human entities.

This dismissal is a form of psychological self-preservation. To fully feel the loss of every tree, every ecosystem, in a world undergoing relentless development and climate collapse would be emotionally paralyzing. We build walls to protect ourselves from this torrent of loss. Yet, for individuals like Deola Bai, and for a growing number of people worldwide, these walls are crumbling. The grief is real, palpable, and profound. It is the grief of a broken relationship.

The challenge is that we lack the language and the rituals to process this grief. To say “I’m sorry for your loss” to someone mourning a tree feels, as Roy notes, like parody or sarcasm. There are no social scripts for this. There is no funeral, no shiva, no designated mourning period. This lack of formal structure can isolate the grieve, making their sorrow seem pathological or absurd, rather than a legitimate response to a genuine loss. The grief becomes a solitary, often secret, burden.

Ecofeminism and the Chipko Legacy: Hugging as Resistance

Deola Bai’s act of hugging the tree stump instinctively recalls one of the most powerful environmental movements in modern history: the Chipko movement of the 1970s in the Himalayan regions of India. The word “chipko” means “to cling” or “to hug,” and it was precisely this tactic—villagers, primarily women, embracing trees to protect them from loggers—that gave the movement its name and its power.

This was not merely a strategic protest; it was a physical manifestation of a deep, relational bond. The trees were not just timber; they were the source of water, fodder, and fuel. They were integral to the community’s survival and cultural identity. The Chipko movement has since been rightly characterized as a seminal moment in ecofeminism, highlighting the interconnection between the exploitation of nature and the subjugation of women, and showcasing a model of care-based ethics over profit-driven extraction.

Deola Bai’s hug, however, is not a premeditated act of protest. It is an act of post-mortem mourning. It is Chipko after the fact, a clinging not to save a life, but to mourn its passing. This shift from preventative embrace to elegiac holding is a heartbreaking indicator of our times. It represents a transition from fighting a battle to surveying a loss, a move from collective action to solitary grief. Yet, in its raw vulnerability, it is just as powerful a political statement. It forces us to see the tree not as a resource, but as a life that was loved.

Jagadish Chandra Bose and the Sentient Plant

To understand the depth of this grief, one must first accept the premise that plants are worthy of such emotion. This is where the legacy of the pioneering Indian scientist, Jagadish Chandra Bose, becomes critically important. In an era when Western science rigidly demarcated the line between animal and plant, Bose conducted meticulous experiments that suggested otherwise.

He demonstrated that plants respond to stimuli, feel pleasure and pain, and can become “excited” or “depressed.” He invented the crescograph, a device that could measure plant growth and responses at a microscopic level, providing tangible evidence of their vitality. Roy highlights a particularly evocative passage from Bose’s writing: “The slight reduction in sunlight was not noticeable from inside the room, but the trees sensed it and expressed its melancholy with a small response.”

The use of the word “melancholy” is revolutionary. It is not anthropomorphism in the simplistic sense; it is the application of a shared emotional vocabulary to a different form of life, based on empirical observation. Bose was asserting that plants have an inner life, a consciousness, albeit different from our own. He famously stated, “It is by causing injury that we can measure the living index,” a phrase that takes on a devastating double meaning in the context of Deola Bai. The injury caused to her by the tree’s death is a measure of her own “living index”—her capacity for empathy, connection, and love that transcends species boundaries.

Modern science is now catching up with Bose’s visionary work. The field of plant neurobiology (a controversial term, but telling) explores how plants communicate with each other through chemical signals and fungal networks (the “Wood Wide Web”), how they remember past stresses, and how they make decisions. They are not passive objects; they are dynamic, responsive beings.

Ecological Grief: From Personal Sorrow to Planetary Anguish

The grief experienced by Deola Bai and described by Sumana Roy is a microcosm of a larger, global phenomenon now recognized by psychologists as “ecological grief” or “solastalgia.” Coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht, solastalgia is the distress caused by environmental change impacting one’s home environment, a form of homesickness while one is still at home. It is the pain felt when a familiar landscape is irrevocably altered by mining, deforestation, or climate-change-fueled wildfires.

This grief is no longer a niche experience. It is felt by:

• Indigenous communities watching their ancestral lands and ways of life disappear.

• Farmers witnessing the degradation of their soil and the failure of rains.

• Scientists tracking the relentless decline of species and ecosystems.

• Young people facing a future shaped by the ecological mistakes of the past.

This grief is compounded by its disenfranchised nature. Society does not grant it the same validity as other forms of loss. There are no bereavement leaves for a melted glacier, no sympathy cards for a coral reef. This lack of recognition can lead to anxiety, depression, and a profound sense of isolation.

Cultivating a New Ethos: Rituals for a Wounded World

So, how do we move forward? How do we console the dead and the bereaved, human and non-human alike? The first step is recognition. We must legitimize ecological grief, acknowledging it as a sane and rational response to the destruction of the living world. We must challenge the phrase “it’s only a tree” whenever we hear it.

The second step is to create new rituals. While we may not have ancient traditions for this, we can build them:

• Memorial Plantings: Instead of just mourning a lost tree, communities can organize ceremonial plantings of native species in its memory.

• Grief Circles: Creating spaces where people can share their feelings of ecological loss without judgment, much like a support group.

• Art and Storytelling: Using poetry, like that of Louise Glück, music, and visual art to give voice to this sorrow, as Sumana Roy does in her writing.

• Witnessing and Documentation: Simply bearing witness, as Deola Bai did, and sharing those stories, is a powerful ritual in itself. It is an act of defiance against erasure.

Finally, we must take a lesson from both Chipko and Jagadish Chandra Bose. From Chipko, we learn the power of active, loving defense. From Bose, we learn the scientific and spiritual truth of interconnection. To see the world through their eyes is to understand that Deola Bai’s tears were not for an “it,” but for a “thou.” Her grief was a measure of a relationship, a bond severed by the impersonal logic of profit.

In the end, consoling the killed begins with seeing the life that was there. It requires us to feel the warmth of our own hand against the cool cheek of the lost, be it human, tree, or an entire ecosystem. It demands that we expand our capacity for tenderness until it is as vast and inclusive as the living world we are a part of, and that we are so rapidly, and so tragically, learning to mourn.

Q&A: Delving Deeper into Ecological Grief

1. What exactly is “ecological grief”?

Ecological grief, also known as solastalgia, is the psychological distress experienced as a direct result of environmental loss and change. This can be the grief over the loss of a specific natural landmark (like a favorite forest being cleared), a species (like local extinction), or a more general anguish about large-scale crises like climate change and biodiversity loss. It’s a form of homesickness for a home that is being destroyed while you are still living in it.

2. Why is it so difficult for society to acknowledge grief for a tree or an ecosystem?

Our social and cultural structures are overwhelmingly anthropocentric, meaning they place human life and human concerns at the center. Our languages of consolation, our religious rituals, and our legal systems are designed around human-to-human relationships. Deep sorrow for non-human entities challenges this hierarchy and is often dismissed as sentimental, irrational, or even pathological. Furthermore, acknowledging this grief would force us to confront the devastating impact of our economic and industrial systems, which can be psychologically and politically inconvenient.

3. How does the work of Jagadish Chandra Bose change how we view plants?

Bose’s early 20th-century research was groundbreaking because he used rigorous scientific experimentation to demonstrate that plants are sentient, responsive beings. He showed they have a nervous system of sorts, respond to stimuli, feel pleasure and pain, and exhibit traits like “melancholy.” This challenges the Cartesian view of plants as unfeeling automatons and provides a scientific foundation for the deep, emotional connection many people feel towards the botanical world. It validates the intuition that a plant is not just an object, but a subject with its own lived experience.

4. What is the connection between the Chipko movement and Deola Bai’s actions?

The Chipko movement (“chipko” meaning “to hug”) was a proactive, collective act of resistance where women hugged trees to physically prevent loggers from cutting them down. It was an embrace of protection. Deola Bai’s hug, decades later, is a reactive, solitary act of mourning. She is hugging the stump of a tree that has already been killed. Her action represents a tragic evolution—from successfully defending life to lamenting its loss. Both acts, however, stem from the same profound sense of connection and value ascribed to the tree.

5. What can we do to cope with feelings of ecological grief?

• Validate Your Feelings: Understand that your grief is a normal, healthy response to loss, not a sign of weakness.

• Find Community: Connect with others who share your concerns. Join local conservation groups, online forums, or simply talk to friends who understand.

• Take Action: Channel grief into action. Participate in tree planting, habitat restoration, clean-up drives, or advocacy work. Action can combat feelings of helplessness.

• Practice Ritual: Create personal or community rituals to honor loss, such as a memorial planting or a quiet moment of gratitude in a natural space.

• Seek Professional Help: If the grief becomes overwhelming, leading to persistent depression or anxiety, do not hesitate to seek therapy from a counselor experienced in eco-anxiety.