STORYTELLING
once upon a time
Stories are the glue of culture, the threads of history and the root of education. Stories are the seeds of change. Storytelling has been instrumental throughout the ages and across cultures as a ubiquitous sense making tool to warn and to guide. “We like stories because they feed our inductive thinking machine, they give us material to find patterns in – stories are a way in which we learn.” Eric Beinhocker, 2006.
The great Earth scholar Thomas Berry describes the significance of story, and in particular the universe as story as follows: ‘The universe story is the quintessence of reality. We perceive the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs, and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the universe in the trees. Everything tells the story of the universe. The winds tell the story, literally, not just imaginatively. The story has its imprint everywhere, and that is why it is so important to know the story. If you do not know the story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything”.
The Last Tree was named after Dr Seuss’ story The Lorax, it's non-sensical and full of truth. Another favourite story at The Last Tree is The Man Who Planted Trees. This is a tale about one man who reforests a barren landscape starting with a single seed. It's a beautiful story about patience, practice and one person making a big difference!
The Last Tree wrote A Story of Sustainability for the Malvern Springs community. We had the design spruced up by Seedpod. You can read it by clicking here.
Our current storytelling project is researching the global ecological crisis as a 'crisis of vision' and how new narratives (stories) embedded with ecological thinking, may give us traction to leave this sinking paradigm.
The Last Tree Highly Recommends:
Book & Author |
Brief |
Details |
The Lorax – Dr Seuss |
A prophetic riddle about environmental destruction and planting the essential seed |
Random House 1971 |
The Man Who Planted Trees – Jean Giono |
The power of one person to seed great change |
1953 |
The Life & Love of Trees - Lewis Blackwell |
A grand photo essay that journeys around the world exploring the wonder of trees. |
Hachette 2009 |
Ecological Aesthetics - Heike Strewlow, Herman Prigann, Vera David |
A deep study of artists working to heal cultural and environmental landscapes |
Birkhäuser Basel 2004 |
How Shall I Live My Life – Derrick Jensen |
Dialogues on Liberating the Earth from Civilization |
PM Press 2008 |
Pronoia – Rob Brezny |
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings |
Frog Books 2005 |
The Last Tree was inspired by ‘The Lorax’, a little fable by Dr Seuss about blindness, brightness and planting the essential seed.
This website was planted in awe and thanks to nature!
Last watered: January 2012• Planted 2009 • Solar-powered web hosting by AISO
The Last Tree in partnership with Ilka Blue Nelson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.