My Habitat

By the dictionary’s definition, habitat is the natural home of an organism—its native environment. One’s surroundings strongly influences one’s health, productivity, and creativity. In turn, our actions impact our habitat. If we collectively take care of our environment it will be healthy and will nurture us.

I am blessed to live in a productive habitat, situated in a rural corner of the northern Shenandoah Valley (because of the direction of flow of the Shenandoah River, it’s also the lower end of the valley). Our region is officially designated as the Appalachian oak forest. Here at the hermitage we are fully surrounded by this forest—many hundreds of acres of woodlands, sprinkled here and there with small farms. Since the farms do not break up the woods, the forest provides a contiguous habitat for wildlife, so their health is satisfactory. It’s also a reasonably stable ecoregion, not too strained, and as yet uncrowded by human development.

These woods are dominated by oaks, which are accompanied by several other large trees such as white pine, hemlock, sycamore, poplar, and maple. Common understory trees are dogwood, cherry, and redbud.

If you had walked these hills a hundred years ago, you’d have seen a rather different mix of trees. Elm and chestnut were common then; but imported blights killed them off. A hundred years hence a different mix will again likely prevail. Current threats to some of these trees are the gypsy moth (mostly the oaks), the wooly adelgid (hemlocks), and dogwood anthracnose. Acid rain, global warming, manmade chemicals escaping into the environment, invasive species, and human development add to the habitat threats. It’s daunting to contemplate the collective impact of these changes. We are collectively not taking care of our environment.

Yet locally, we are blessed by the fact that our habitat is still reasonably fit—especially when compared with many stressed parts of the planet. Despite the local ominous signs of habitat transformation, I live in an area that is beautiful and far more healthy than that provided for too many people and animals. I remind myself daily of our good fortune and I wonder what I can do to help my habitat. No substantial answers come to me, except to try to understand my local surrounding and meld with it as much as possible. And certainly enjoy the gift I’ve been given.