Where does it end?

There is no clear border around the Quiver Tree Forest. No dramatic change in features of soil, slope or other geographic characteristics tells why there is a forest here and not over there.

It appears as if conditions once favoured the spread of these trees in more numbers in this place than the occasional solitary one that so sparsely dots the landscape further afield through Namaqualand and other parts of this arid region.

It is unclear whether the spreading is still continuing, whether it has stopped or may be decreasing due to insufficient tree replacement. We may have our doubts compounded by the cacophony of current debates concerning climate.

All natural phenomena have long or short trajectories, but finite trajectories all the same, even the existence of Table Mountain. Permanence is an illusion caused by short term perspectives. Humanity is one of the so far short term species living on earth.

Life of all kinds on earth is the longest perspective possible about life as we know it. Every species has a shorter time perspective about its own durability, if capable of having a perspective at all.

Every aspect of species existence is a still more short term issue, usually quite short, like the reign of the current regime anywhere on earth. How much can be done about prolonging any species life on earth is currently topical in human dialogue. Not all agree about our capacity as a species to gain sufficient consensus for significant action. Saying this changes the probability, as the brain is our main gift from evolution.

Can something be done about the creation, enhancement or sustaining of a forest like this and should it? Clearly the will and capacity for untold projects exist and are being created all the time. Efforts and achievements to make a difference of varying scope and capacity are what people are all about as part of their survival.

Human interventions of all kinds in nature are currently talking points of increasing magnitude, the advisability of many often hotly disputed. Whoever prevails in such debate and decision has finite time, resources and resolve to sustain the effort. Changing course in practices adopted happens all the time as new insights, needs and technologies arrive in about all such ventures.

This is true at the level of nature reserves, around and within communities everywhere on earth, within national borders of all countries, on earth overall and even in space where care is being introduced regarding human made debris accumulating there. The moon and Mars will one day have water conservation policies and rules.

In the meantime, back home, changes dramatic and subtle bring joy and despair to people over what happens to specifics in nature around them and far away. Using the lion’s share of earth’s largesse these days, people are belatedly learning to be more careful.